Recently in Prints, Drawings, Paintings Category

William Heath created three large, multifaceted satires of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK). The first and third can be found in most collections of British caricature, including ours, but the second is very rare. Thanks to the Friends of the Princeton University Library, the Graphic Arts Collection has now acquired this plate in honor of Dale Roylance.

The complexity of the scene reflects the cacophony of inventions and intellectual pursuits raging at that time. Heath begins the group in January 1928, following an accident in the Thames Tunnel, and each feature tunnels to locations around the world. Although they are all varied, the first features accidents due to reading and study; the second focuses on inventions and patents; and the third includes fantastical travel machines.

A five-story structure stands at the center of our new print, with ten windows labeled ‘Acme of Human Invention. Grand Servant Superseding Apparatus for Doing Every Kind of Household Work &c, &c, &c.’ Inside each window are different steam-powered machines with elaborate systems of ropes and pulleys for rocking the baby or ironing the clothes or turning the cooking spit. A ‘superseding stair tunnel’ runs up the center.

An exploding volcano shoots travelers from Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean and multiple flying machines fill the sky whle at the bottom right, a chef cooks on ‘Patent Fire: Fresh imported from the interior of Mount Etna.’

Beginning in 1716, William Burgis stood at the Brooklyn Heights shore and drew the waterfront along the east side of Manhattan, calling it “A South Prospect of the Flourishing City of New York in ye Province of New York in America.” The drawing was probably sent to London to have the British printmaker John Harris (active 1686-1740) engrave the design onto four copper plates, which were printed on sheets of paper 20 ½ x 9 ¼ inches, altogether over six feet long. We know it was completed by 1721 because it was advertised in The American Weekly Mercury as “A Curious Prospect of the City of New-York…”

Many reproductions, reduced in size, have been engraved over the years including the 1746 “Bakewell reissue” and in 1761, a new impression engraved for the London Magazine. Another appears in: William Loring Andrews (1837-1920), New Amsterdam, New Orange, New York (New York: Dodd, Mead and company, 1897) Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2009-2656N

When several editions are placed next to each other, it becomes evident that each is slightly different. The numbers identify important buildings, beginning with no.1: Fort Amsterdam first built in 1626. No.2 is a chapel and No.3, the “Secretaries Office” both inside the fort. No.4 is the “Great Dock with a bridge over it” built in 1659 at the bottom of Moore Street. No.5, the south-most buildings are the “Ruines of White Hall built by Governour Duncan [Dongan]”

Sir Francis Baring, 1st Baronet (1740-1810), a British merchant and director of the East India Company, is seen on the left, seated with a letter in his right hand. In the center is his brother John Baring (1742-1829) and leaning over the ledger on the right is Charles Wall (1756-1815), a partner in Baring’s Bank and son-in-law to Sir Francis.

Lawrence called portraits like this one “half-history pictures,” combining standard portraiture with the highest level of art, history painting. “Lawrence’s triple portrait … makes you feel like a witness to some grand event, with all the tension, excitement and gravity of history in the making,” writes Sylviane Gold. “Lawrence, like all successful portrait painters, knew how to make his sitters look important. In this case, it wasn’t hard. They were. (The banking trio, after all, provided funds for the Louisiana Purchase, among other epoch-making deals.)” -The New York Times April 23, 2011.

Why does the ledger say “Hope”?

See also: Sir Francis Baring (1740-1810), Observations on the establishment of the Bank of England: and on the paper circulation of the country (London: Printed at the Minerva Press for Sewell and Debrett, 1797). Rare Books (Ex) HG2994.B23

The French painter and book illustrator Paul-Emile Bécat worked at the center of the Parisian literary scene in the early 20th century. Among his foremost supporters and patrons were his sister-in-law and her partner, Adrienne Monnier and Sylvia Beach. Monnier ran a bookshop called La Maison des amis les livres on the Left Bank of Paris and assisted Beach in opening her own shop, Shakespeare and Company, which eventually moved right across the street on rue de l’Odeon. Beach commissioned two portraits, one of her lover and two years later, one of herself. She kept both in their apartment until her death in 1962, when Princeton University acquired her estate.

Acquired in 1964 from the Sylvia Beach estate, through the generosity of Graham D. Mattison, Princeton Class of 1926, and with the interest and support of Miss Beach’s surviving sister, Mrs. Frederic J. (Holly Beach) Dennis of Greenwich, Connecticut. Rare Books and Special Collections, Firestone Library.

Congratulations to Kenneth Newman, who had a birthday this month and today, after 63 years running The Old Print Shop on Lexington and 29th Street, has retired from the print business. I was one of the fortunate last customers to benefit from his expertise, take his advice, and come home with a wonderful new treasure for our collection.

Although we have his sons, Robert and Harry, to continue the family business, print curators across the country are going to miss having Mr. Newman welcomed us into his wonderfully crowded shop, with original tin ceilings and wood cases, to show us rare and remarkable treasures.

Their website offers a few facts. Kenneth’s father Harry Shaw Newman (1896-1966) purchased The Old Print Shop in 1928 and his son joined the business in 1949. Both in New York City and traveling across the country, they probably sold masterpieces to every museum in the United States and helped to build many of the leading collections of fine art prints.

And how many dealers can boast having Berenice Abbott as the shop photographer?

Although the shop is in good hands, with a new gallery coming in the fall, we will miss Kenneth Newman and wish him well in his new life.

According to the New-York Historical Society records, when John Vanderlyn arrived in New York City from Kingston, NY in 1792, he honed his painting skills by copying portraits by Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828), among them a painting of Aaron Burr Jr., Class of 1772. Impressed by the copy, Burr took Vanderlyn under his wing, sending him to Paris to continue his artistic training at the Ecole des Beaux Arts.

Vanderlyn returned to New York in 1801 and moved in with the Burr family during the time that Burr was serving as the third Vice President of the United States (1801-1805). While in their home, Vanderlyn painted a second portrait of Burr, which now hangs at the New-York Historical Society. Hippolyte Burr, the grandson of Colonel Aaron Burr, made a copy of this work, which was presented to Princeton University in 1933 by Miss Evelyn Benedict.

The charming sketch seen above came to Sinclair Hamilton, and eventually to Princeton University, in an album of the artist’s early work, which has since been unbound and housed separately. In trying to match it with a published book, we thought we had succeeded with the 1843 In Town & About, or, Pencillings & Pennings by Joseph C. Neal (Graphic Arts GAX Oversize Hamilton 1594q). This set of sketches includes one on news boys in particular.

Unfortunately, we were wrong. It is a different project (see below). Any suggestions about the scene above would be greatly appreciated.

Tracking Darley’s work is daunting. In just 1843, the twenty-one-year-old artist completed a surprising number of drawings, including illustrations for Yankee among the Mermaids; Streaks of Squatter of Life; Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs: Late of the Tallapoosa Volunteers; Big Bear of Arkansas; In Town & About, or, Pencillings & Pennings; Major Jones’s Courtship; Major Jones’s Sketches of Travel; New Orleans Sketch Book; Odd Leaves from the Life of a Louisiana “Swamp Doctor”; Pictorial History of the United States of America; and Scenes in Indian Life.

Louis XIV wasn’t the only monarch to build a country estate. In the 1820s, George IV, King of England (1762-1830) spent nearly 9,000 pounds on a fishing lodge, designed by Sir Jeffery Wyatville (1766-1840). The Chinoisery Fishing Temple, in the southern end of Windsor Great Park, became a retreat for the King and his mistress, Elizabeth Conyngham, Marchioness Conyngham (1769-1861).

Nearby was the royal menagerie where George kept his kangaroos, ostriches, and other exotic animals. His favorite was a giraffe, given to him by Muhammad Ali, Pasha of Egypt (1769-1849), which arrived in London on August 11, 1827.

According to the Windsor & Eton Express (August 1827) “On Monday morning the camelopard … was conveyed in a caravan prepared for the purpose, to the Royal Lodge, where it greatly excited the admiration of his Majesty, and distinguished visitors. It is a most superb animal, beautifully spotted, and of an amazing height. Three Arabs have accompanied it, who are totally unacquainted with our language. It is now temporarily accommodated at Cumberland Lodge, till a fit place be built for it at the royal menagerie, at Sandpit Gate.”

The giraffe died in August 1829 and George died ten months later.

1804 was a defining year for Napoléon (1769-1821), who began it as the First Consul and ended it as Emperor of France. During the winter, there was an assassination plot against Napoléon and although the leaders of the conspiracy were captured, there were lingering fears that the Republic would collapse should Napoléon be kidnapped or killed.

On May 18, 1804, the Senate passed a bill to establish a French Empire with Napoléon as its first Emperor. After many months of debate, Napoléon was finally crowned on December 2, 1804 by Pope Pius VII.

Rowlandson’s print shows Napoléon and his wife Joséphine (1763-1814), along with their family, riding in a carriage pulled by a monster and driven by a devil. The verse at the top begins with an old proverb: “Set Beggars on Horseback - they’ll ride to the Devil,” meaning if someone rises to power or wealth too quickly, they will become corrupted. Napoléon’s mother emphasizes this with her remarks, “My Dear Son Nap how charmingly we ride - but it seems very much down hill -.”

Do you recognize this scene?

The unidentified illustration is by the Swedish/American artist Oscar Cesare. “Born in Linkoping, Sweden, [Cesare] studied art in Paris before he came to this country when he was 18 years old,” notes the artist’s obituary in The New York Times, July 1948. “He continued his art studies in Buffalo and then went to Chicago, where he worked for many newspapers. He then came to New York, where his first political cartoons appeared in The World. His work also appeared in The Sun and The Post. He became a regular contributor to the Sunday magazine of The New York Times in 1920 …”

But the more interesting article was in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1922 with the headline “O. Henry’s Dearest Romance Goes to Smash: His Own Daughter’s Marriage, for which the Master of the Love Story So Wanted a Happy Ending.” The story chronicles the meeting of Cesare and Margaret Porter, daughter of the novelist O. Henry (William Sydney Porter, 1862-1910), their marriage, and subsequent divorce.

“…her father was about the most retiring literary celebrity America has ever known. His readers were legion, his friends he could number on his fingers. One of these was Oscar Cesare, a young artist but recently come to America from Sweden. Cesare was destined to become almost as famous in art as O. Henry in writing. His war cartoons in New York newspapers were to fire the nation. Critics were to call him “America’s ablest cartoonist,” his work “distinguished by unusual vigor and consummate assurance.”

“European newspapers were to reproduce more of his cartoons than any other artist’s in America. But, when he met Margaret Porter, he was still a struggler drawing sketches and caricatures for this newspaper and that. O. Henry and his daughter, and Oscar Cesare, became a happy trio. O. Henry quietly watched them as he watched Broadway and Bohem’s shopgirls and millionaires and all the seething panorama of New York. As he saw the budding of romance, did he, perhaps, write that charming love-story, A Service of Love?”

How do you store fragile prints that are five or more feet long and nearly three feet wide? Unfortunately, the past solution was to roll them up and store them on top of various cabinets, in the few inches between the furniture and the ceiling. Keeping the prints “out of sight” was not the best idea, as no one was aware of the water damage being done by a leak. We have now rescued a number of these fine art prints, many by the artist Leonard Baskin, and saved them from further decay.

Thanks to our Special Collections Paper Conservator, Ted Stanley, they are being washed one-at-a-time because of their enormous size. We are rehousing them in large, flat folders stored on oversize shelves. Here’s an example of before and after.

By the time the Irish playwright John O’Keeffe (1747-1833) wrote his most famous farce Wild Oats; or, The Strolling Gentlemen in 1791, he was already a celebrated author. Within two years, the Old American Company in New York City staged a production and an American edition of the play was printed by T. and J. Swords for Manhattan bookseller and stationer John Reid. To decorate the volume, American engraver Cornelius Tiebout was commissioned to create a frontispiece (seen here).

According to the historian D. M. Stauffer, Tiebout was the “first American-born professional engraver to produce really meritorious work, …significant for his role in introducing the English method of stippled portraiture to America.” Like many early printmakers, Tiebout apprenticed to a silversmith where he learned to carve in metal. Further training with the British artist James Heath led to his expertise in stipple engraving.

It is notable that Tiebout chooses to illustrate one of the humorous supporting characters rather than the leading man. His print offers a full-length portrait of the Quaker Ephraim Smooth and quotes his lines, “Why dost thou suffer him to put into the hands of thy servants, books of tragedies, and books of comedies, prelude, interlude, yea, all lewd. My spirit doth wax wrath.— I say unto thee, a play-house is the school for the old dragon, and a playbook the primer of Belzebub.”

For a contemporary production of Wild Oats, see:

Other sources on Tiebout: W. Dunlap: A History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States (New York, 1834); American Engravers upon Copper and Steel, 3 vols (i-ii, New York, 1907; iii, Philadelphia, 1917), i, pp. 271-2; ii, pp. 520-33; iii, pp. 271-84 [vols i-ii by D. M. Stauffer, vol. iii by M. Fielding]; N. E. Cunningham jr: The Image of Thomas Jefferson in the Public Eye: Portraits for the People, 1800-1809 (Charlottesville, VA, 1981) [disc. of Tiebout’s Jefferson prts, incl. newspaper advertisements and publishers’ corr.]; W. C. Wick: George Washington, an American Icon: The Eighteenth-century Graphic Portraits (Washington, DC, 1982) and G. W. R. Ward, ed.: The American Illustrated Book in the Nineteenth Century (Winterthur, DE, 1987).

When William Heath published a satire on Sir Francis Burdett’s opposition to Gale Jones’s imprisonment, Heath represented Spencer Perceval and his associates as a hydra or monster with multiple heads. It is a strong visual image but Heath was of course not the first to use the device. Knowing who he stole it from is complicated since the caricaturists borrowed and stole their parodies quite freely.


Surely Heath was reading Samuel Tipper’s magazine The Satirist or Monthly Meteor, in which Samuel De Wilde presented another variation of the scene in The Opposition Hydra, or Brittania’s Worst Foe. This might be the most immediate inspiration for Heath.


Or perhaps it Thomas Rowlandson’s The Champion of Oakhampton, Attacking the Hydra of Gloucester Place, published on March 15 1809? Especially with the subtitle he added from Horace’s Epistles, “Bellva Multorum es Capitum!!” (Thou Art the Beast of Many Heads).

And what about Rowlandson’s 1784 print, The Champion of the People, in combination with James Gillray’s St. George & the Dragon two years earlier?

It’s hard to say.

Here are a few others.

In moving furniture last week, several rolls of paper were found, having fallen behind a cabinet perhaps ten years ago. No damage was done and we now have three enormous woodcuts back in the collection of the Puerto Rican master printer Lorenzo Homar where they belong.

Each of the prints includes a long quote. The first is a poem by Tomas Blanco (1900-1975) entitled “Unicornio en la Isla.”

Isla de la palmera y la guajana
con cinto de bullentes arrecifes
y corola de soles.
Isla de amor y mar enamorado.
Bajo el viento:
los caballos azules con sus sueltas melenas;
y, con desnuda piel de ascuas doradas,
el torso de las dunas.
Isla de los coquís y los careyes
con afrodisio cinturón de espuma
y diadema de estrellas.
Isla de amor marino y mar embelesado.
Bajo los plenilunios:
Húmedas brisas, mágicas ensenadas, secretos matorrales…
Y el unicornio en la manigua alzado,
listo para la fuga, alerta y tenso.

Thank you to the Susana Torruella Leval, 1993 Acting Director and Chief Curator, El Museo del Barrio, for her translation of the two quotations in this woodcut from speeches given by Pedro Albizu Campos (1891-1965) in 1930:

Nationalism is not merely the restoration of its lands to Puerto Rican hands, nor the salvation of its commerce and its finances; it is the nationality that stands to redeem its sovereignty and to save for its people their superior values of life. Colonization is the nullifying and the absorption of our moral forces that God entrusted to this land. If to one madman a people denies its personality, * also denies its capacity to verify any form of legal transaction. If to one people its personality is denied, also denied is its capacity to rule its own destiny and we are placed at the level of an irresponsible madman.
Ponce, 5 October 1930.

Puerto Rico has the right to its independence because when the agreement of Paris was signed, by which the United States took possession of the island, Puerto Rico had already enjoyed international recognition of its sovereignty and it is for this reason that Spain did not have the right to cede it in as much as the United States did not have the right to acquire it.
28 June 1930

Former U.S. Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles (1888-1959) is remembered by many for his effective negotiations during the Cold War and his support of South Vietnam after the Geneva Conference of 1954. Here at Princeton, he is also remembered as a member of the Class of 1908, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, and an active participant in the American Whig-Cliosophic Society debate team.

On May 15, 1962, his family was invited to Princeton University, along with dignitaries including former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, for the dedication of the John Foster Dulles Library of Diplomatic History. His portrait, painted by William F. Draper in 1959, was proudly featured at the event.

Today, thanks to the beautiful work of painting conservator Paul Gratz, our portrait of Mr. Dulles is cleaned and repaired and back on the wall of our Dulles Reading Room. Sincere thanks also to our colleagues at the Princeton University Art Museum for their help in transporting and hanging the important work.

To read “Remarks at the Dedication of the John Foster Dulles Library of Diplomatic History,” in Princeton University Library Chronicle 23, no. 4 (summer 1962), see: http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visualmaterials/pulc/pulcv23n_4.pdf

The graphic arts collection holds nearly 2800 prints and drawings donated by Dickson Queen Brown (1873-1939), most British caricatures from the 18th and 19th centuries. A great deal has been written about the artists he collected but little about the collector himself. Here are some facts from his class profile.

Brown was born in Pleasantville, Pennsylvania on April 2, 1873, the son of Samuel Brown, president of Tide Water Oil Company. He attended the Hamilton School in Philadelphia and Phillips Exeter Academy, before entering Princeton in 1891 and graduating four years later. While at Princeton, Brown was a member of Whig Hall, Klu Klux, Valhalla, Tiger Inn, and President of Republican Club.

After Princeton, he attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating in 1898 with degree of B. S. Electrical Engineering. From 1899 to 1900, Brown studied at the Royal Mechanical Technical Hochschule, Berlin, before joining the family firm. Working his way up through numerous positions, Brown was ultimately named President of Tidal Oil Company and President, Associated Producers Company (producing oil and operating in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Tennessee, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana and Mexico).

“… the older Independents of the Pennsylvania Oil Regions were still “fighting the civil war” so far as Standard Oil was concerned. We remember reporting a dinner at the Union League Club at the invitation of Robert D. Benson, president of Tide Water, a mild-mannered gentleman. We had come to know him at his office at 11 Broadway from the windows of which he and his co-executives, Robert McKelvy and Dickson Q. Brown, could not help but see “26 Broadway” headquarters and symbol of Standard Oil across the street. They were sons of Bryon David Benson, David McKelvy and S. Q. Brown, founders of the Tide Water and famed builders of the first interstate pipeline from the Pennsylvania oil fields to the Atlantic seaboard.”

“Having lost out in winning control of Tide Water, John D. Rockefeller had gone ahead with his Northern and Southern tiers of lines to carry oil to his tidewater refineries. At the Union League dinner, Benson gave his personal recollection of the alleged Standard Oil-inspired raid of Tide Water’s annual meeting of January 17, 1883, held at Titusville. The “Taylor-Satterfield” (Rockefeller) faction, opposing the “majority Benson” faction, elected itself to control of the company. Benson vividly recalled his father rushing to Titusville, taking him along. There was no elevator in the building and the offices were on the second and third floors. The main stairway was barricaded with heavy planks and guarded by a force of Benson men. Benson pere and fils joined the defenders.”

“The enemy, it turned out, made no physical attempt to take the offices, contenting themselves with carrying the case to court. The speaker recalled the anxiety of officers and employees sweating out the verdict of Judge Church at Meadville who heard the argument of the old management - the arrival of a telegram from his father, reading, “Thank God, a just judge reins in Crawford County, ” meaning that Judge Church had declared “the pretended election void.”

“Since the fight for control in Titusville in 1883, the success of the company has been unbroken, ” Benson finished proudly. The clicking of the pipeline dispatcher’s telegraph key as you entered Tide Water’s offices bore him out. But the Bensons, McKelvys and Browns were not forgetting. Many old-time Independents would not be caught dead talking to a Standard Oil man.”

From The story of the American Petroleum Institute by Leonard M. Fanning.

David Hess was a Swiss artist and soldier in the Dutch army. He conceived of a series of anti-French caricatures and negotiated with ‘Humphries’ in London to engrave and print them. This work is assumed to have been accomplished anonymously by forty-year-old James Gillray, at the height of his fame as a caricaturist, and issued in a bound edition of 1200 copies. Three years later, a new edition was released in Venice, with the descriptions translated from Dutch to Italian and printed alongside the French.

We also acquired Revolutions-Almanach von 1799 (Göttingen: Johann Christain Dieterich, 1799), in which six plates are reproduced (stolen?) in a much reduced format. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2013-0210N

Years later in The Athenaeum (London, 1886) the Hess/Gillray publication was still remembered. “The French Revolution had a profound effect upon satirical art, made it fierce as well as furious, and partially renewed that savage and brutal spirit which prevailed in the lifetime of Luther and during the Thirty Years’ War. But it likewise gave new life.”

“The Revolutions - Almanack of 1799, by David Hess, has some unusually good cuts, including one on Bruderschaft in “Hollandia regenerate,” which represents the “brother of mankind” being assailed by his neighbours, who pull his hair, punch him, throttle him, tear his coat, and knock his head with a chair. Meanwhile the heraldic seven arrows are trampled underfoot and a cat tears them to pieces.”

“Hess was a clever satirist whose works must have increased many a man’s resolution to resist the new doctrines. His prints retain considerable value to this day, and should be studied by those who wish to understand the history of opinion at that time. …Of his prints against Napoleon M. GrandCarteret writes:”

“‘Souvent aussi, ces compositions, toujours bien exécuteés, voient leur intérét augmenté par le souffle de liberté qu’elles laissent entrevoir, par cette protestation d’une ame indigneé qui jette, en 1815, un cri de victoire strident, Enfin! et dès lors Hess semble considérer sa mission de combattant du crayon comme terminée.’”

A recent move uncovered this Japanese folk painting, named for Ōtsu, the capital city of Shiga Prefecture, Japan, where this genre of painting originated. The designs were accomplished by anonymous artists and become extremely popular with merchants and tourists traveling between Edo (Tokyo) and Kyoto along the Old Tokaido Road. In other cultures, the paintings might be called outsider art or naive art. In Japan, they are called Ōtsu-e.

The paintings fall into several standard categories include beautiful women, warriors, ogres, and Buddhas and other religious icons. The graphic arts collection holds several Ōtsu-e, including this traditional Fuji Musume (Wisteria Maiden) possibly from the Edo period (1615-1868).

Our colleagues at the British Museum note, “The ‘Wisteria Maiden … was one of the stock subjects of folk painters in Ōtsu since the seventeenth century. It enjoyed a new vogue in the nineteenth century after the theme was adapted in 1826 for the Kabuki stage, as a dance sequence in which the young woman came alive out of an Ōtsu painting.”

Congratulations to Volker Schroder, Associate Professor of French and Italian, who was just awarded a David A. Gardner ‘69 Magic grant for the research and development of an exhibition celebrating Versailles and the tercentenary of the death of Louis XIV (1638-1715). Thanks to the Council of the Humanities and especially to our magic benefactor, Lynn Shostack. Prof. Schroder will develop “Versailles on Paper,” using prints and books in the Graphic Arts Collection, as well as rare books from Firestone and Marquand Libraries. The opening is scheduled for February 2015. A special issue of the Princeton University Library Chronicle is also planned.

“On the 18th of April, 1651, the young Louis … paid his first visit to Versailles. He was then thirteen years of age, and had been king for eight years. He came to hunt in the woods, and … to sup at the chateau of his father, a building of moderate size, constructed on three sides of a court, with a pavilion at each corner, and surrounded by moats with stone balustrades. The site of that chateau and of its moats is now covered by the great central projection of Louis’s palace.”

“During the next ten years … [he] did little in the way of building or embellishment until 1662. From 1662 to 1669 he adorned the park and gave magnificent fetes there. In 1669 he decided to enlarge the chateau, but he was not to carry out his purpose without encountering opposition.”

“[Jean-Baptiste] Colbert was then superintendent of buildings as well as of finance, and Colbert’s hobby was the Louvre. He set himself resolutely against the king’s project, and did not hesitate to speak his mind. “Your Majesty knows,” he wrote to the king, “that apart from brilliant actions in war nothing marks better the grandeur and genius of princes than their buildings, and that posterity measures them by the standard of the superb edifices which they erect during their lives. Oh, what a pity that the greatest king, and the most virtuous, should be measured by the standard of Versailles.”
—from James Eugene Farmer, Versailles and the Court under Louis XIV (1905) Firestone DC126 .F23 1905

Vicki Principi recently found this print in the theater collection, which matches the imaginary group of British scientist posted a few days ago and the imaginary group of American authors posted several years ago. The printed title is Shakespeare and His Friends, but it is better known as Shakespeare and His Contemporaries.

The print reproduces John Faed’s 1851 painting of the same title, depicting Shakespeare at the Mermaid Tavern in London for a meeting of the Friday Street Club (named for the tavern’s address). Sir Walter Raleigh founded the group but Shakespeare was not a regular member.

Seen with Shakespeare and Raleigh are Thomas Dorset; Josuah Sylvester; William Camden; John Selden; Francis Beaumont; John Fletcher; Francis Bacon; Ben Jonson; Samuel Daniel; John Donne; Henry Wriothesley Southampton; Robert Cotton; Thomas Dekker; and Thomas Sackville Dorset.

See an extended essay on the Mermaid:
Michelle O’Callaghan, ‘Patrons of the Mermaid tavern (act. 1611)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press. [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/theme/95279, accessed 7 April 2013]