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W.T. Moncrieff, Memoirs and Anecdotes of Monsieur Alexandre, the Celebrated Dramatic Ventriloquist. Adventures of a Ventriloquist; or, The Rogueries of Nicholas . . . . Illustrations by Robert Cruikshank (London: J. Lowndes, 1822). Graphic Arts Cruik R 1822

Graphic Art holds a rare copy of the memoir of Nicolas-Marie-Alexandre Vattemare (1796-1864), an actor, ventriloquist, quick-change artist, and philanthropist, who used as his stage name Monsieur Alexandre. Although trained as a doctor, Vattemare's natural talents as an entertainer led him onto the stage, a career which lasted from 1815 to 1835.

Vattemare performed a one-man show in which he transformed into dozens of different characters, each with their own costumes and voices. Bound with his memoir are scripts of the various sketches he performed, each one illustrated with a frontispiece portrait of that individual persona, made by Robert Cruikshank (1789-1856).

Vattemare's fame led to great wealth, which he used to acquire a vast collection of rare books and coins (among other things). Late in his life, Vattemare was instrumental not only in founding of the Boston Public Library but also a system of interlibrary loans and cultural exchanges between libraries around the world.

"The extraordinary life of Nicolas-Marie-Alexandre Vattemare (1796-1864)," wrote Suzanne Nash (Princeton University Professor of French and Italian, Emeritus), "known today by a handful of bibliographers as the founder of the American Collection at the Bibliothèque Administrative de la Ville de Paris and for his role in the creation of the Boston Public Library, deserves to be told, not only as a revealing page in the history of Franco-American relations, but as a window onto the rapidly changing cultural history of nineteenth-century France."
"Alexandre Vattemare: A 19th Century Story," Society of Dix-Neuviémistes (2004) http://www.sdn.ac.uk/dixneuf/september04/nash/vattemare.pdf

In 1824, Sir Walter Scott wrote Vattemare an epigram:
Of yore, in Old England, it was not thought good
To carry two visages under one hood;
What should folks say to you who have faces so plenty
That from under one hood you last night showed us twenty?

Stand forth, arch-deceiver, and tell us in truth
Are you handsome, or ugly? In age, or in youth?
Man, woman, or child? Or a dog or a mouse?
Or are you at once each live thing in the house?

Each live thing, did I ask, each dead implement too?
A workshop in your person -- saw, chisel and screw.
Above all, are you one individual? I know
You must be, at the least, Alexandre and Co.

But I think you're a troop, an assemblage, a mob,
And that I, as the sheriff must take up the job;
And instead of rehearsing your wonders in verse,
Must read you the riot act and bid you disperse.

(above) Washington Irving (1783-1859), Rip Van Winkle (East Aurora, N.Y.: Roycroft Shop, 1905). Initials & title-page by Dard Hunter (1883-1966). Gift of David B. Long, in honor of Gillett G. Griffin. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2007-3529N

(below) Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Nature (East Aurora, N.Y.: Roycroft Shop, 1905). Initials, title-page, and colophon by Dard Hunter (1883-1966). Gift of David B. Long, in honor of Gillett G. Griffin. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2007-3634N

From 1904 to 1910 Dard Hunter was a Roycrofter, working for Elbert Hubbard (186-1915) at the Roycroft Shop, an art and crafts collective in East Aurora, New York. Rip Van Winkle and Nature are among his first published book designs for the group, where he also designed stain glass and other handcrafts.

Eventually Hunter tired of their repetitive, communal book production and left the Roycrofters to study traditional European typography and papermaking. He wrote, “My mind, however, does not run East Aurora way as I believe I have fully recovered from the disease. Poetically speaking, I have been vaccinated by the virus of something better, something nearer the ideal. My time is spent, I believe, as my mind seldom reaches back to that beautiful little village with its surface of good cheer and its gizzard of strife, jealousy and hate.” —The Life Work of Dard Hunter (GA Oversize TS1098.H8 H86f)

Flap open (above)


and flap closed (left)

Mother Goose, The Old Fashioned Mother Goose’ Melodies, Complete: with Magic Colored Pictures ([New York]: G.W. Carleton & Co.; Donaldson Brothers, designers & printers, MDCCCLXXIX [1879]). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2005-0660N

Before the Cotsen children’s literature collection came to Princeton, Elmer Adler collected a few specifically graphic books of juvenilia. This metamorphic (or transformation) picture book contains chromolithographed illustrations with foldout flaps. The plates are signed “W.L.S.” which refers to the Virginia-born illustrator and writer William Ludwell Sheppard (1833-1912) who worked for several of the large publishing houses such as Donaldson Brothers.

As a young man, Sheppard served in the Richmond Howitzers artillery and during the American civil war, he was a member of the Topographical Engineers Department of the Army of Northern Virginia. If you go to Richmond today, you can see three monuments he designed to honor the Confederate soldiers.

Paul Muldoon, Epithalamium. Designed and illustrated by Debra Weier (Princeton, N.J.: Emanon Press, 2011). Copy 6 of 50. Gift of Leonard L. Milberg, Class of 1953 in honor of Richard M. Ludwig. Ex 2012-0017Q

“Epithalamium, a wedding poem by Pulitzer Prize winning Paul Muldoon, was designed, printed and bound by Debra Weier of Emanon Press. The book was conceived and produced over four years and seven months, and completed in May of 2011. Each of the seven verses claims its own page and is nestled in its own popout, and each popout symbolizes its respective verse through its structure.”—Prospectus inserted.

Additional images can be found at: http://debraweier.com/books/muldoon/muldoon.html

Oxford English Dictionary:
Epithalamium, n.: A nuptial song or poem in praise of the bride and bridegroom, and praying for their prosperity.
1595 Spenser (title) Epithalamion.
c1600 Timon (1980) iii. v. 49 Sing vs some sweete Epithalamion.
1607 J. Marston What you Will ii. i, Epythalamiums will I singe.
1653 Cloria & Narcissus I. 81 To sing Epithalamions to our marriage Feasts.
1690 T. Burnet Theory of Earth iv. 168 The 45th psalm‥is an epithalamium to Christ and the Church.
1739 W. Melmoth Fitzosborne Lett. (1763) 339 Give me timely notice of your wedding day, that I may be prepared with my Epithalamium.
1828 T. Carlyle Crit. & Misc. Ess. (1857) I. 163 Epithalamiums, epicediums.
1859 J. C. Hobhouse Italy II. 210 The Epithalamiums of Catullus and of Statius.
1860 G. J. Adler tr. C. C. Fauriel Hist. Provençal Poetry iv. 67 The epithalamia belonged likewise to the popular class of poetry.
2011 P. Muldoon Epithalamium

[Facsimile edition of the Biblia Latina, commonly known in English as the Gutenberg Bible, formerly known as Mazarin or Mazarine Bible] [Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1913-1914]. 2 v. Copy 6 of 300. Gift of Elmer Adler. GA Oversize 2006-0087F

“Diese faksimile-ausgabe des ersten [-zwelten] bandes der zweiundvierzigzeillgen Gutenburg-Bibel erschien im jahre 1913[-14] im Insel-verlag zu Leipzig. Die wiedergabe in mehrfarbigem lichtdruck erfolgte durch die Hofkunstanstalt Albert Frisch in Berlin nach dem pergament-exemplar der Königlichen bibliothek in Berlin und dem der Ständischen landsbibliothek in Fulda. Gedruckt wurden 300 exemplare / davon nr. 1-3 auf pergament / die übrigen auf van Gelder-bütten. Durch professor Ansgar Schoppmeyer in Berlin wurden die exemplare nr. 1-3 mit der hand ausgemalt und bei diesen / wie auch bei 10 exemplaren auf büttenpapier nr. 4-13 das gold mit der hand aufgelegt. Der einband ist dem Fuldaer exemplar nachgebildet.”

Johann Gutenberg (1397?-1468), working with merchant and money-lender Johann Fust (1400-1466) and printer Peter Schöffer (ca. 1425-ca. 1502), completed the printing of a 42-line Bible some time before August 1456. This lavishly produced facsimile edition of their book is based on the copies held by the Berlin Koniglichen Bibliothek and in the Stadtischen Landes-bibliothek in Fulda (the binding comes from this copy). Our former curator of graphic arts, Elmer Adler, generously donated a copy to Princeton University. A second set is housed in the William H. Scheide Library.

Henry Mayhew’s book is subtitled The Adventures of a Lady in Search of a Good Servant By One Who has been “Almost Worried to Death.” It was, in fact, Cruikshank’s cleanliness that first attracted Mayhew to him, as described in the introduction:

“How I Became Acquainted With The Artist To My Little Book.”

“When I reached Mr. Cruikshank’s door …, from the beautiful appearance that the threshold of his establishment presented, I at once knew my man. The doorstep was so sweetly white and clean that one might have been tempted to eat one’s dinner off of it, while the brass plate was as beautiful a picture as I ever remember to have seen. In that door-plate I could see the workings of a rightly constituted mind. … When the door was opened, I was delighted to find that everything within bore out the conclusion I had drawn of this great man’s character from his simple doorstep.”

“After waiting a few minutes in a delightful ante-room, I was shown into the Study, and for the first time stood face to face with that highly-talented artist and charming man, George Cruikshank, Esquire, whom, as a painter, I don’t think I go too far in calling the Constable of the day. … Nature has evidently thrown Mr. Cruikshank’s whole soul in his face; there is (if I may be allowed the expression) a fire in his eye which is quite cheerful to look at; and when he speaks, from the cordial tone of his discourse, you feel as certain, as if his bosom was laid bare to you, that his heart is in its right place. Nor can I omit to mention the picturesque look of his whiskers, which are full and remarkably handsome, and at once tell you that they have been touched by the hand of a great painter.”

Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), Diverse maniere d’adornare i cammini ed ogni altra parte degli edifizi: desunte dall’architettura Egizia, Etrusca, e Greca con un Ragionamento Apologetico in difesa dell’Architettura Egizia, e Toscana, opera del Cavaliere Giambattista Piranesi Architetto (Diverse Ways of Ornamenting Chimneypieces and All Other Parts of Houses Taken from Egyptian, Etruscan, and Grecian Architecture with an Apologia in Defense of the Egyptian and Tuscan Architecture, the Work of Cavaliere Giambattista Piranesi)(Roma: Nella Stamperia di Generoso Salomoni, 1769). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize Rm 2-15-G

Fifty-six of the sixty-nine plates in Piranesi’s Diverse maniere d’adornare… are devoted to fireplace designs. Philip Hofer, former Curator of Printing and Graphic Arts at Harvard University, described the book as “a lamentably poor seller.” Arthur Samuel reviewed the work in his 1910 book Piranesi, writing “Over-decoration, meaningless ornament, lack of self-restraint, unpleasing design, grotesque without being useful or interesting, are all crowded into schemes which it would be nearly impossible to reproduce.” (GA 2009-0974N)

For a more positive reading of the images, see William Rieder, “Piranesi’s Diverse Maniere,” in The Burlington Magazine 115, no. 842 (May 1973): 308-17 (available online).

Plates variously numbered, Princeton’s copy is imperfect with some plates wanting.

Samuel Ampzing (1590-1632), Beschryvinge ende lof der stad Haerlem in Holland. In rijm bearbeyd: ende met veele oude en nieuwe stucken buyten dicht uyt verscheyde kronijken, handvesten, brieven, memorien ofte geheugenissen, ende diergelijke schriften verklaerd, ende bevestigd. With: Petrus Scriverius, Lavre-Kranz voor Laurens Koster van Haerlem, eerste vinder vande boeck-druckery (Haarlem: Adriaan Roman, 1628). Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process

This stinging satire of British imperial rule in India, punctuated with Rowlandson’s hand colored plates, features Francis Edward Rawdon-Hastings, 1st Marquess of Hastings (1754-1826), known as The Earl of Moira. Hastings served as Governor-General of India and led the British troops to victory when the Gurkhas declared war. The battles ended in 1816 and the book appeared shortly afterwards.

Pulled for ART 453 / ECS 453 Caricature and Modernity: 1776-1914

Mauro Boni (1746-1817), Lettere sui primi libri a stampa di alcune città e terre del l’Italia superiore: parte sinora sconosciuti, parte nuovamente illustrate (Venezia: Nella stamperia di Carlo Palese, 1794). Three books, each has a special title page. Bookplate of the Library of the College of New Jersey (previous name of Princeton University Library), “Presented by J.S. Morgan Esq.” Original accession number 95452 stamped on p. III. Graphic Arts collection GAX Z155. Gift of Junius Spencer Morgan, 1867-1932

This early bibliography of incunables in Genoa, Pavia, and Brescia is attributed to Mauro Boni (title in English: Letters on the First Printed Books in Some Cities and Lands of the Upper Italy, Hitherto Unknown). Two of the three title pages are decorated with engravings by the Venetian artist Francesco Novelli (1767-1836). Novelli acquired a reputation as a copyist of Rembrandt etchings, a reputation which led some historians to value his work only for its draftsmanship and technical skill.

The Oxford Dictionary of Art gives him only a small paragraph: “Francesco Novelli was the son and pupil of Pietro Antonio Novelli III. He went on to work at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice before going to Rome. Novelli merits special mention for the copies he made of Rembrandt’s etchings, with such remarkable skill that his reproductions have sometimes been confused with the originals. He also produced engravings of Mantegna’s drawings, and was a member of several academies.”

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616), The History of Don Quixote;
edited by J. W. Clark and a biographical notice of Cervantes by T. Teignmouth Shore; illustrated by Gustave Doré (London; New York: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, [1864?]). Previous owner William Taylor Scheide (1847-1907). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2004-0809Q

“His carte de viste is in such request that his photographer cannot supply the demand; and an order sent from this country for a dozen or two copies remained for weeks unfilled. Better still the publishers vie with each other for the privilege of giving his works to the public. He is able to name his own terms, and finds that no publisher considers them too high.”

The reaction of the critics, on the other hand, was mixed. An unsigned review in Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art (February 6, 1864), comments “Whether M. Doré has been employed to illustrate Cervantes, or Cervantes to illustrate M. Doré, will be a nice problem for the critics … [and] for the fortunate mortals who can be expected to become their purchasers. … the conception of Don Quixote’s personal appearance is a vulgar one, of which we speedily grow tired. If is assumed that he cannot be made ridiculous enough by a gaunt figure or a dismal countenance unless his bearing and attitude are made positively clumsy and lubberly.”

“There have recently been published two new editions of Don Quixote of the class styled “sumptuous,” writes a critic for The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature (August 1868). “One is a reprint of one of the worst translations in the English language and the other is in Spanish. The first is illustrated by M. Gustave Doré who, if anything, understands his author even less than the translator…”

Dekisai kyō miyage (Dekisai’s Souvenirs of Kyoto). H. Isoda, 1677. 7 volumes; 54 woodblock prints; woodblock text. Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process

At a time when Hishikawa Moronobu (1618-1694) was the illustrator of choice in Kanbun era Edo (seventeenth-century Tokyo), ukiyo-e artist Yoshida Hanbei (active 1664-1692) was similarly in demand in Kyoto. These two artists were among the first to sign their work and so, among the first to be remembered as the great book illustrators of Japan.

This seven volume guidebook to Kyoto has been attributed to the latter. Princeton also holds a seventeenth-century travel diary Kōshoku tabi nikki illustrated by Hanbei. In his History of Japanese Printing and Book Illustration, David Chibbett refers to Dekisai kyō miyage as a sequel to Kyo warabe (Child of Kyoto), an earlier guide to Kyoto by Nakagawa Kiun, published posthumously in 1658.

Watanabe Shōtei (or Seitei, 1852-1918), Shōtei kachō gafu (省亭花鳥画譜 / Picture Album of Shōtei’s Birds and Flowers) (Tōkyō: Okura Magobē, [1890-1891]). Graphic Arts GAX 2012 Japanese

Günter Grass, Die Vorzüge der Windhühner (The Advantages of Windfowl) ([Berlin-Frohnau]: Luchterhand [1956]). Graphic Arts GAX in process

The Nobel Prize winning novelist Günter Grass (born 1927) is also a respected visual artist. Before the publication of his most famous novel Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum, 1959) Grass studied sculpture and graphics, first at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and then, at the Universität der Künste Berlin (Berlin University of the Arts). Biographies describe his academic career as “a stonemason’s education.”

In 1956, to accompany his first book of poetry (his first publication), Grass designed lithographs to be interspersed between the poems and for the paper wrapper. Martin Esslin writes, “It is hard to tell whether the poems are there to illustrate the drawings, or the drawings to illustrate the poems.”

For his poetry in English, see: Günter Grass, In the Egg and Other Poems (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977). Firestone Library (F) PT2613.R338 A24 1977

In the study The Hortus Floridus of Crispijn Vande Pas the Younger, Spencer Savage attempted to collate the leaves and compare the states of the engraved plates for every copy he could locate. Pagination varies from 175 to 200 leaves bound in an oblong-quarto but beyond that, the complex bibliography remains unsolved. He concludes “the production of the book was … of the nature of a continuous process.”

The consistent title page, shown above, is framed with figures representing the Sun and the Moon, holding up a curtain on which are medallion portraits of two celebrated botanists, Rembertus Dodonaeus (Rembert Dodoens, 1517-1585) and Carolus Clusius (1526-1609).

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the moon, as many people watched. Around this time, Nauman moved from Northern California to Pasadena and was working on his sky sculpture, Untitled 1969. While the piece was never realized in 1969, Nauman’s work was performed by ForYourArt Skywriters over the Arroyo Seco on September 12, 2009. Curator Andrew Berardini arranged it for an exhibition at the Pasadena Armory Center for the Arts. See the video:

This is the court record of the 1814 trial accusing Sir Henry Mildmay (1787-1848) of “crim com” or adultery with his deceased wife’s sister Harriett Bouverie (died 1834). At the time, Bouverie was the wife of Sir Archibald John Primrose, 4th Earl of Rosebery (1783-1868) and mother of their four children. While the charges were not contested, a trial was held to assess the damages. The jury awarded Rosebery the sum of 15,000 pounds, the highest damages ever given in a case of Crim Con.

Rosebery divorced his wife the following month and Mildmay married her the following year in Germany, “by special permission of the King of Wurttemburg.” Harriett had three more children with her second husband and they lived happily together for nearly twenty years.

Graphic Arts holds the first German edition of Historiae Philippicae. For the 1470 Venice edition, published by Nicolas Jenson, see Rare Books: Kane Collection (ExKa) Incunabula 1470 Justinus. The original unabridged work was written in forty-four books by the Augustan historian Pompeius Trogus.

This edition has a large woodcut on the title page, 49 text illustrations, and 21 chapter tailpieces, chiefly by Wieditz and Breu the elder. Hans Weiditz II was a German woodcutter born sometime before 1500 and died sometime around 1536. The Getty’s union list of artists’ names notes that he was probably, but not certainly, the son of the German sculptor, Hans Weiditz I (ca. 1475-ca. 1516) and that he may have been born in Freiburg im Breisgau. Although many scholars (Dodgson, Friedländer, Fraenger) agree that Hans Weiditz II and the Master of Petrarch are the same artist, there is still debate about this issue. Musper and Buchner, for example, distinguish two hands when contrasting work from Strasbourg with that from Augsburg.

George Cruikshank (1792-1878), "The Antiquarian Society" in Scourge, or, Monthly Expositor of Imposture and Folly (June 1812): 431. Graphic Arts GA Cruik 1811.2.

One of George Cruikshank's early jobs was creating the frontispiece caricatures for William N. Jones's satirical journal The Scourge; first subtitled: Monthly Expositor of Imposture and Folly and then, Literary, Theatrical, and Miscellaneous Magazine, and finally, Monthly Expositor of Literary, Dramatic, Medical, Political, Mercantile and Religious Imposture and Folly (1811-1816).

These large hand-colored foldouts were often attacks on the royal family and leading politicians, although this 1812 satire looks at book collectors. An accompanying article notes that antiquarians "collect materials without any regard to their utility, and without attempting to facilitate the study of antiquities, by arranging them in classes, and by pointing out their dependence on each other, or their connection with collateral branches of investigation." It goes on.

Brandeis wrote a nice piece about Scourge in their blog: http://brandeisdigitallibrary.blogspot.com/2011/03/scourge-or-monthly-expositor-of.html

Josef Luitpold Stern (1886-1966), Der entwurzelte Baum (The Uprooted Trees).Woodcuts by Otto Rudolf Schatz (1900-1961) (Berlin: Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1926). Graphic Arts GAX 2011- in process

Austrian author and poet Josef Luitpold Stern was an active member of the sozialdemokratischen Bildungszentrale (Social Democratic Educational Center) and in 1924, co-founded the Büchergilde Gutenberg (Gutenberg Book Guild) together with Bruno Dressler, chairman of the Education Association of German printers. With offices in Leipzig and Berlin (and later Prague, Vienna, and Zurich), their objective was to publish inexpensive books in an effort to make them available to a broad audience.

While teaching at the Vienna Workers’ University, Stern collaborated with the equally progressive Viennese artist Otto Rudolf Schatz on several woodblock books. Their first was Der entwurzelte Baum in 1926, followed by Die Neue Stadt (The New State) in 1927. Both volumes promoted the ideals of social democracy through poetry and graphic images beautifully carved and printed from full-page wood blocks.

When the Nazis took over the Book Guild, both men moved temporarily to the United States. Schatz lived briefly in New York City but when he tried to return in 1938, both he and his wife were sent to a concentration camp in Bistriz. Stern made his way to Philadelphia and worked for a time at the newly established Pendle Hill, a Quaker study center at Wallingford, Pennsylvania.