Some Highlights from Princeton´s Graphic Arts Collection (Annual review)


A choice of interesting articles from the brilliant website of Graphic Arts Collection from the Princeton University Library, all posted by graphic arts librarian Julie L. Mellby.

> Timothy Cole’s Woodrow Wilson (January 12, 2012)
What is imaged here seems to be not an example of a photoxylographic block, but of a metal stereotype or cliché. See also “Photoxylography and Timothy Cole”, posted on on January 15, 2009

> American Comic Strip Printing Plates and Drawings (June 18)
Some further examples of clichés, here photomechanically taken from drawings by some early comic artists.

Timothy Cole: Engraving and Printing Plate, 1818 – 19 (Graphic Arts Coll., Princeton Univ.)

> Adventures of Qui Hi (March 8)
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. 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. Qui hi, or Kooee Hye, is the Bengalee phrase meaning “Who’s there”.

> Unpublished Rowlandson Drawings (March 6)

William Combe (?): Adventures of Qui Hi, London 1816 (Graphic Arts Coll., Princeton Univ.)

> Anti-Slavery Broadside (January 27)
The House that Jeff Built, an etched broadside by American cartoonist David Claypoole Johnston from 1863, modelled after George Cruikshank´s famous pamphlet ‘The Political House that Jack Built’. Johnston was well known for his nine volume Comic series “Scraps”

> Anti-Abolitionist Caricature (March 30)
On a print by George Cruikshank satirizing the early British abolitionist movement

> Thomas Nast archive (March 16,)
A scrapbook by Thomas Nast´s biographer Albert Bigelow Paine

> The Apocalyptic and Messianic Prophecies of the Book of Daniel (April 5)
A chromolithographed wall chart by Seventh-Day Adventist William Ward Simpson illustrating the Apocalyptic and Messianic Prophecies of the Book of Daniel, New York ca. 1900s. Simpson preached to enthusiastic crowds  using large, colored wall charts to illustrate the hidden biblical prophecies.

> À l’Abattoir les Cartellistes!! (April 12)
In the French Third Republic, a coalition was formed of left-wing parties in the Chamber of Deputies. They established the Cartel des gauches in opposition to the right-wing Bloc National. The French caricaturist Jehan Sennep cartooned the members of this Cartel in the Paris papers and transformed them into cattle being led to the slaughter house of the elections of 1928. The book is sardonically printed on rough brown butcher’s paper.

Jehan Sennep, À l’Abattoir les Cartellistes!!, 1928 (Graphic Arts Coll., Princeton Univ.)

> Triptychs (August 10)
Color woodblock prints by some Japanese artists depicting scenes from the Sino-Japanese War.

> The Inconvenience of a Blow Up (September 10)
In the early 19th century, exploding steam engines were responsible for many deaths. Artists and print dealers throughout London seized on these colorful spectacles, with clouds of smoke and body parts, to make a series of comic prints.

> A Lottery Dream Book (September 27)
Lottery dream books or guidebooks were popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth century but few have survived. An astrologer using the pseudonym Fortunato Indovino wrote one in 1754 that was reissued many times over more than eighty years. Dream books were in great demand for deciding the numerical meaning of dreams. Events in everyday life had numbers.

> Monster Soup Commonly Called Thames Water (October 16)
The satire on the Metropolitan Water Supply of London was drawn and etched by William Heath. Although not dated, the Commissioners were appointed in 1827 and reported in 1828. Princeton recently acquired a unique compilation of caricatures organized by one of Heath’s publishers, Thomas McLean, in the early 1830s. The album includes approximately sixty hand-colored caricatures.

William Heath: Monster Soup Commonly Called Thames Water, ca. 1828 (Graphic Arts Coll., Princeton Univ.)

> Soldiers Don’t Cry (November 15, 2012)
Close-ups from the Battle of New Orleans and Death of Major General Packenham [sic] on the 8th of January 1815 by Joseph Yeager (see also the article from March 29, 2012)