journal of the american historical print collectors society
volume 38, number 2 • autumn 2013
THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL PRINT COLLECTORS SOCIETY
The American Historical Print Collectors Society, founded
in , is incorporated as a non-profit association in the
State of Connecticut and has been granted tax-exempt status
by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. The purpose of the
Society is:
To foster the collection, preservation, study, and exhibition
of original historical American prints that are one hundred
or more years old;
To support and encourage research and development of
publications helpful to the appreciation and conservation
of such historical prints;
To cooperate with historical societies, museums, and other
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This issue of Imprint is supported in part by a generous bequest from Wendy Shadwell
to the American Historical Print Collectors Society.
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PUBLICATION COMMITTEE
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Sue Rainey
Rosemarie Tovell
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John M. Zak
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IMPRINT
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Call for Entries 2013–2014
The Ewell L. Newman Book Award
T
o recognize and encourage outstanding publications
enhancing appreciation of American prints at least
one hundred years old, the award consists of a framed citation and one thousand dollars.
Small and large works, those of narrow scope and those with
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Publications remain eligible for a period of roughly two years
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Jury, it will not be considered again except in a substantially
revised edition. Jurors are collectors, authors, and scholars of
American historical prints. They are Thomas Bruhn (chair),
Storrs, Connecticut; Jonathan Flaccus, Putney, Vermont;
Ned McCabe, Peabody, Massachusetts; Sally Pierce,
Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts; and Lauren Hewes,
Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.
The most recent award, presented at the Society’s annual
conference in May 2013, honors Philadelphia on Stone:
Commercial Lithography in Philadelphia, 1828-1878, edited
by Erika Piola. Contributing authors are Jennifer
Ambrose, Donald C. Cresswell, Sara W. Duke,
Christopher W. Lane, Erika Piola, Michael Twyman, Dell
Upton, and Sarah J. Weatherwax. Philadelphia on Stone is
published by the Pennsylvania State University Press in
association with The Library Company of Philadelphia.
A chronicle of all the past Newman Award winners appears
on the Society’s web site at:
www.ahpcs.org/NEWMAN_award_winners.htm
To submit a book to the Jury for consideration, please mail to:
Thomas P. Bruhn
42 Summit Road
Storrs, CT 06268
For additional information, contact the Jury chairman at:
thomas.bruhn@uconn.edu
journal of the american historical print collectors society
volume 38, number 2
autumn 2013
Imprint
contents
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Audubon and Cincinnati
Robert C. Vitz
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Monkeys, Misrule, and the Birth of an American Identity in Picture Books of
the Rising Republic
Laura Wasowicz
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William Hind Prints of the Labrador Peninsula
Gilbert L. Gignac
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Book Reviews
Rosemarie Tovell, Book Review Editor
Catharina Slautterback, Chromo-Mania!: The Art of Chromolithography in Boston,
1840-1910; Donald C. O’Brien, The Engraving Trade in Early Cincinnati, With a Brief
Account of the Beginning of the Lithographic Trade; [ Joseph J. Felcone], Portrait of
Place: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints of New Jersey, 1761-1898, from the Collection
of Joseph J. Felcone
It is a pleasure to publish in this issue articles resulting from two talks delivered at AHPCS annual
meetings: Gilbert Gignac spoke on William Hind at the 2006 meeting in Ottawa, and Robert
Vitz spoke on Audubon in Cincinnati last May. ¶ The issue opens with Vitz’s delightful
account of John J. Audubon’s early days in America when he tried various ways to support himself and his wife Lucy, while always pursuing his passion for birds. It was in Cincinnati that
Audubon formed the determination to systematically paint as many American birds as he could
and to publish a great ornithological work. ¶ Laura Wasowicz pursues the theme of monkeys as
central characters in American children’s books. The popularity of the subject was inspired by the
publication of natural histories of exotic lands that featured monkeys and apes. Selecting examples from 1798 to 1859, Wasowicz shows how the simian characters act out commentaries on
human behavior. This role playing took on added resonance after the publication of Darwin’s On
the Origin of Species in1859. ¶ While Wasowicz touches briefly on issues of producing books and
their illustrations, Gilbert Gignac gives a definitive, almost step-by-step, account of the making
of a heavily-illustrated, two-volume documentary work, Henry Youle Hind’s Explorations in the
Interior of the Labrador Peninsula: The Country of the Montagnais and Naskapee Indians (London:
Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1863). Fortunately, many of the preliminary
sketches and finished watercolors of William Hind, the expedition artist, have survived, and pertinent production records of the Longman publishing house are preserved at the University of
Reading. Gignac’s account is suffused by his appreciation of the talent that both brothers brought
to a life-long dedication to give a true “picture” of Canada in text and image. ¶ The book reviews
are all on place-specific topics: chromolithography in Boston; the engraving and lithographic
trade in Cincinnati; and representations of New Jersey.
S a l l y P i e r c e , Editor
f r o n t c o v e r : Pug throws the roof tile and carries the cat to the chimney, in The Monkey’s Frolic, a Humorous
Tale (Lancaster, MA: Carter, Andrews & Co.; Boston: Carter & Hendee; Baltimore: Charles Carter, ca. 1828–1830),
leaf 4. Copper engraving, probably by Joseph Andrews, 67⁄8 x 41⁄4". Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.
b a c k c o v e r : Pug tries on his new suit, in Pug’s Tour through Europe [Philadelphia?: Morgan & Yeager?, ca,
1824–1825?], 2. Copper engraving, probably by Hugh Anderson, 41⁄4 x 31⁄2". Courtesy of the American
Antiquarian Society.
Robert C. Vitz
Audubon and Cincinnati
ohn Audubon (fig. 1) spent only nine months in
Cincinnati, yet those months proved critical to his
career. While living here, he not only sketched six subjects for his future Birds of America, but the failure of
the Western Museum, his employer, to pay him convinced
the artist-naturalist to devote his time and energy to compiling a book illustrating the birds of the United States. But
more of all that later. To understand Cincinnati’s place in
the Audubon story, we have to know something about the
man before he arrived here in early 1820.
There is considerable confusion surrounding much of
Audubon’s early life, but it was a confusion he promoted
in an effort to make himself appear more respectable.
However, modern biographers agree that he was born on
the island of Santo Domingo, in what is now Haiti, on
April 26, 1785, the illegitimate son of Jean Audubon, a
French naval officer, and his twenty-seven-year-old
French mistress. His mother died within the boy’s first
year. Given his mother’s last name, Jean Rabin spent his
early childhood on his father’s sugar plantation. At about
the age of eight, and shortly before the revolution that
swept across the island, young Jean and his father sailed to
Nantes on the west coast of France. Here, on his father’s
considerable estate, his obliging stepmother reared him;
and his name, to obscure his illegitimacy, was changed to
Jean-Jacques Fougère Audubon. For the next ten years he
learned the ways of a French gentleman, and he excelled
at singing, dancing, shooting, riding, fencing, and playing
J
the flute and violin. He also learned to draw, and he developed a keen interest in his natural surroundings. Excitable,
enthusiastic, and considered quite handsome, he drew
people to him.
Partly to avoid service in Napoleon’s navy, Audubon’s
father sent him in 1803 to the United States where he
owned 284 acres along the fast-flowing Perkiomen Creek,
near where it joined the Schuylkill River, north of
Philadelphia. Mill Grove, with its large two-story fieldstone
house, surrounded by fertile farmland and inviting woods,
became the eighteen-year-old Audubon’s introduction to
America. “Hunting, fishing, drawing, and music occupied
my every moment,” he later wrote in his journal, “cares I
knew not, and cared naught about them.” In short order, he
established a reputation for shooting, hunting, fancy
clothes, dancing, and skating. He also soon met his neighbor’s oldest daughter, the almost seventeen-year-old Lucy
Bakewell (fig. 2). This intelligent, well-read, musical young
woman found Audubon fascinating, and her steadfast character served as an important counterweight to his romantic
exuberance. She, too, enjoyed riding and dancing, shared his
disdain of city life, and helped him learn English. Of course,
despite his somewhat flamboyant social life, Audubon also
began his serious observation of the natural world, often
joined by Lucy, and he experimented with drawing life-like
images of the birds he shot.
Four years later, and after an unsuccessful business adventure, the couple married. The day following the brief cere-
r ob e rt c . v i t z grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, received his B.A. from
DePauw University, his M.A. from Miami University, and his Ph.D. from
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For thirty-six years he
taught United States history at Northern Kentucky University in
Highland Heights, Kentucky, before retiring in 2008. His principal
research interests are American cultural and intellectual history, with a
particular emphasis on the contributions of nineteenth-century
Cincinnati. He has published in a variety of scholarly journals including
New York History, Queen City Heritage, American Music, and the Filson
Club History Quarterly. He is the author of The Queen and the Arts:
Cultural Life in Nineteenth-Century Cincinnati (Kent, OH: Kent State
University Press, 1989), and At the Center: 175 Years at Cincinnati’s
Mercantile Library (Cincinnati: Mercantile Library Association, 2010).
f ig . 1 , op p o s i t e . Engraved by Charles Turner after a painting by
Frederick Cruikshank, John J. Audubon, painted in London ca.1831.
Engraving, 91⁄2 x 7" (plate), published by Robert Havell, London, 1835.
Boston Athenaeum
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f ig . 2 . Photograph of a miniature by Frederick Cruikshank, Lucy
Bakewell Audubon, painted in London ca. 1831. Collection of the NewYork Historical Society. Negative #44214.
mony in the Bakewell parlor, they departed for Louisville,
Kentucky, where Audubon and Ferdinand Rozier, a partner, hoped to launch successful business careers. They traveled by stage across Pennsylvania, ferrying across the
numerous rivers and ascending mountain ridges on the
rutted and often muddy roads. At Pittsburgh they waited
for their furniture and household goods to catch up with
them. And then it was down the Ohio River by cumbersome flatboat, a five hundred-mile journey that deposited
them in Louisville in a remarkable ten days. That summer
Audubon divided his time between establishing customers
for his store and wandering along the river in pursuit of
birds. Evenings were spent socializing.
The Louisville years provided some unexpected benefits
for Audubon, particularly the arrival of Alexander Wilson
in 1810. The Scottish-born naturalist, already considered
America’s leading ornithologist, visited Louisville in search
of subscribers for his great multi-volume work, American
Ornithology, then in the process of being published.
Although tempted to subscribe, Audubon declined. He
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also came to the realization that his own illustrations were
superior to Wilson’s and that he knew more about bird
behavior and habitat. However, the two men did spend
several days birding together, before Wilson started back
east. He died three years later, leaving his final volume to
be completed by a friend.
If Louisville offered good company, it did not provide
much business success, and after two years the partners,
along with Lucy and the newly-born Victor Gifford
Audubon, set out for Henderson, Kentucky, a small village
some 125 miles downstream from Louisville. Located on
the edge of the frontier and in a thinly-populated region,
one wonders why Audubon thought commercial success
would find them there. It didn’t. But, there were always new
birds. While Rozier tended to the store, Audubon often
went wandering, sometimes for weeks at a time. He sighted a large flock of white pelicans, managed to misidentify
sandhill cranes, and took great delight in spotting scarlet
tanagers, ivory-billed woodpeckers, and other forest birds.
Audubon’s rendering of the Ivory-bill (fig. 3) (probably
extinct, despite several reported recent sightings) remains
one of his most popular bird portraits. On one of his wilderness rambles, Audubon stared in awe as millions of passenger pigeons migrated overhead. “The air was literally filled
with pigeons,” he noted in his ever present journal, “the
light of noon day was obscured as by an eclipse; the dung
fell in spots not unlike flakes of melting snow; and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to
repose.” One hopes that he, at least, wore a hat. Of course,
the passenger pigeon (fig. 4) is now also extinct. The last of
the species—named “Martha” in honor of Martha
Washington—died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. Her
body is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution.
By this time Audubon had refined his drawing technique. Using a board marked with a wire grid, he would
secure a freshly killed bird to it in a lifelike manner by
means of additional wires and threads. He then sketched
the bird on drawing paper marked with an identical grid,
so that the result was an image both lifelike and life-size.
Background and foliage could be added later.
As their store foundered, Audubon and Rozier invested
in two other projects, a large saw and grist mill and, later, a
small steamboat. Both proved unsuccessful. Audubon has
often been accused of being a poor businessman, and there
f ig . 3 , op p o s i t e . John James Audubon, Ivory-billed Woodpecker, ca.
1826. Study for Havell plate no. 66, inscribed: “Drawn from Nature by
John J. Audubon/ Louisianna [sic],” watercolor, pastel, black ink,
graphite, gouache, and white lead pigment on paper, 381⁄4 x 251⁄16", laid
on card. Collection of the New-York Historical Society. Digital image
created by Oppenheimer Editions. Object #1863.17.66.
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f ig . 5 . Drawn and engraved by Doolittle & Munson. Cincinnati, ca.
1831. Engraved vignette, 5 x 9", from a map. Courtesy of the Cincinnati
Museum Center.
is considerable truth to that, but it was the financial Panic
of 1819 that finally did him in. The nation’s first depression
dried up credit and brought on a severe contraction of the
economy. In July of that year Audubon filed for bankruptcy. Court records listed his possessions: one piano, 150
books, 20 Windsor chairs, various rugs and carpets, Lucy’s
wedding silver, 4 mirrors, china, 1 large walnut desk, 4 silver candlesticks, 1 fiddle, 1 flageolet, a flute, a guitar, several beds and cribs, and livestock, plus drawing materials, and,
of course, a large portfolio of drawings. The estimated value
was $7,000, which was used to offset his debts. Fortunately
for posterity, a friend purchased the drawings and drawing
f ig . 4 , op p o s i t e . John James Audubon, Passenger Pigeon, 1824.
Study for Havell plate no. 62, inscribed: “Drawn from Nature/
Pittsburgh. Pena./ J.J. Audubon,” watercolor, pastel, graphite, gouache,
black chalk, and black ink on paper, 26 5⁄16 x 181⁄2", laid on card.
Collection of the New-York Historical Society. Digital image created by
Oppenheimer Editions. Object #1863.17.62
materials and returned them to Audubon. At this point, no
doubt the lowest point in his life, fortune turned.
Cincinnati’s Western Museum offered him a position.
Cincinnati (fig. 5), founded in 1788, was a thriving city of
about 10,000 people in 1820, and already the largest community in the western country. Dr. Daniel Drake (fig. 6),
the city’s preeminent physician, scientist, town promoter,
and civic organizer, had been the driving force in establishing a scientific institution known as the Western Museum.
As one of the museum’s five managers, he sought to fill it
with “the natural productions and antiquities of the
Western Country….” The Reverend Elijah Slack, another
manager and also the president of the recently opened
Cincinnati College, agreed to house the museum’s collection in the college rooms. First, however, they needed to
recruit a staff. Largely on the strength of a letter from
Robert Todd of Lexington, Kentucky, (the father of Mary
Todd Lincoln), Drake hired Audubon as a taxidermist “to
stuff birds and fishes.” A very confident Drake offered a
handsome salary of $125 per month. To make the situation
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f ig . 6 . Engraved by A. H. Ritchie, Daniel Drake, M.D., age 65.
Published by Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati, for the Ohio Valley
Historical Series, no. 6, 1870. Engraving, 113⁄8 x 7 1⁄2". Courtesy of the
Cincinnati Museum Center.
f ig . 7. Alonzo Chappel, probably influenced by a painting by John
Woodhouse Audubon, John J. Audubon. Hand-colored steel engraving,
7 1⁄4 x 51⁄4" (image), published by Johnson , Fry & Co., New York, 1861.
Courtesy of the Old Print Shop.
even more attractive to Audubon, the college owned a copy
of Alexander Wilson’s American Ornithology. The thirtyfive-year-old Audubon accepted immediately. John
Audubon is often depicted in his later portraits as a rustic
frontiersman (fig. 7), a sort of companion to James
Fennimore Cooper’s literary character, Natty Bumppo.
This was a pose the artist skillfully used to market himself
in England, much in the way Benjamin Franklin had done
in France a half-century earlier. However, in all likelihood,
while in Cincinnati, he looked more like the gentlemanly
self-portrait painted in oils in 1822 or 1823 at Beech
Woods, Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. Audubon painted
himself wearing a green jacket, white waistcoat, white shirt
with starched, pointed collar, and necktie tied in a bow. His
curly brown hair is brushed up from his forehead and falls
just to the top of his collar.1
Whatever his looks, by January 1820, the Audubons
were in Cincinnati. While Lucy set up housekeeping in a
small, cheaply furnished rented house on East Third
Street, John worked closely with Robert Best, the Western
Museum’s curator, who showed him many of the best bird
watching spots in the area. It was Best who informed him
about a “strange species” of bird in Newport, Kentucky, a
bird that built its nests in clusters attached to the walls of
f ig . 8 , op p o s i t e . John James Audubon, Cliff Swallow, 1820. Study
for Havell plate no. 68, inscribed: “Cincinnati Ohio May 20th 1820/
John J. Audubon,” watercolor, pastel, black and brown ink, and graphite
with touches of gouache on two sheets of paper, 1813⁄16 x 117⁄8", laid on
card. Collection of the New-York Historical Society. Digital image created by Oppenheimer Editions. Object #1863.17.68.
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the military post there. Off went Audubon to observe and
sketch these cliff swallows (fig. 8). Best also placed an
advertisement in a local newspaper, asking people to bring
in specimens for mounting. Although Best meant dead
specimens, one morning Audubon was surprised by a
woman who brought in a large live bird, pinned in her
apron, which had fallen down her chimney the night
before. Recognizing it as a juvenile least bittern (fig. 9), he
sketched it while it stood motionless on his table. His
curiosity also led him to perform an experiment with two
upright books, set one inch apart, to see if the bird could
squeeze through without the books falling. It did. This
indicated to him how bitterns could easily move through
reeds without being noticed.
During those Cincinnati months, Audubon also made
drawings of a sharp-shinned hawk and a cedar bird, now
f ig . 9 . John James Audubon, Least Bittern, 1820, 1832. Study for
Havell plate no. 210, inscribed: “No. 1- a small Bittern.” Watercolor,
graphite, pastel, collage, gouache, and black ink on paper, 143⁄4 x
2111⁄16", laid on card. Collection of the New-York Historical Society.
Digital image created by Oppenheimer Editions. Object #1863.17.210.
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called a cedar waxwing. Both of these images found their
way into his Birds of America. A fifth bird proved the most
exciting for Audubon, for he had never seen this one
before. Indeed, imagining it to be a newly discovered
species, he labeled it the “Cincinnati Gull” (fig. 10). In his
journal, he described this first encounter: “They would
alight side by side, as if intent on holding a conversation….
We watched them for nearly a half an hour, and having
learned something of their manners, shot one, which happened to be a female. On her dropping, her mate almost
immediately alighted beside her, and was shot.” Well, so
much for avian chivalry. Later, he learned that the bird had
already been named for Charles Lucien Bonaparte,
Napoleon’s nephew and an accomplished ornithologist in
his own right, and so it is known today as Bonaparte’s Gull
(fig. 11). Audubon’s shooting of specimens can be disturb-
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f ig . 1 0 . John James Audubon, Bonaparte’s Gull, originally labeled
Cincinnati Gull, 1820. Inscribed: “Drawn from Nature & from the
Living Bird/by John J. Audubon Cincinnati Ohio Augt. 19.1820.”
Pastel, graphite, watercolor, and black ink on paper, 115⁄16 x 17 3⁄16", laid
on card. Collection of the New-York Historical Society. Digital image
created by Oppenheimer Editions. Object #1863.18.26.
ing to modern sensibilities, but there was no other way for
an artist to draw a bird with any accuracy, and he seldom
killed indiscriminately. Working with dead specimens also
permitted him to open up the birds’ stomachs to determine
what food had recently been eaten, thus allowing him to
learn more about their habitat and eating habits. Often,
after sketching a bird in the field, he would cook and eat it.
Although not something the Audubon Society currently
recommends, Audubon’s notes do provide us with some
interesting tastes, albeit vicariously. Grebes, a type of duck,
proved “fishy, rancid and fat.” No surprise there. Redwinged blackbirds he considered “good and delicate.” The
hermit thrush, somewhat smaller than a robin, was “fat and
delicate,” and the greater yellowlegs, a large shorebird, was
deemed “very fat but very fishy.” The northern flicker, a
species of woodpecker that often feeds on the ground, he
found “very disagreeable,” complaining that it had “a strong
flavor of ants.” The cedar waxwing, however, received his
highest culinary praise: it is “sought by every epicure for the
table,” he wrote. Even the turkey vulture, that ever present
companion of road kill, did not escape his palate, for he
concluded that it “tasted well.”2
Audubon’s relationship with the Western Museum did
not go smoothly. The same economic crisis that had caught
him in Henderson swept through Cincinnati’s financial
community. Bank notes depreciated and land values collapsed. Daniel Drake, the civic leader and town promoter,
had to sell his home and move to a log house on the edge of
the city, which he dubbed “Mount Poverty.” The Western
Museum quickly found itself with insufficient operating
funds. As Audubon wryly noted some years later, “I found,
sadly too late, that the members of the College Museum
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were splendid promisers, but poor paymasters.” In lieu of any
payment, Dr. Drake did support a public display of
Audubon’s drawings. The editor of the Inquisitor-Advertiser
praised the exhibit: “No one can examine them without the
strongest emotions of surprise and admiration,” he wrote.
“We hope that every person will avail himself of the first
opportunity to examine specimens in this branch of fine arts,
which for fidelity and correctness in execution, are so excellent as to surpass…all others that we have ever witnessed.”3
The Audubons limped along in Cincinnati, aided by
Lucy’s careful management and the city’s low cost of living.
“Our living here is extremely moderate,” John wrote, “the
markets are well supplied and cheap, beef only two and
one-half cents a pound, and I am able to provide a good
deal myself; Partridges are frequent in the streets, and I can
shoot Wild Turkeys within a mile or so; Squirrels and
Woodcocks are very abundant in the season, and fish
always easily caught.” Without pay, however, both John
and Lucy turned to other sources of income. In late
February, John Audubon opened a drawing school, advertising in the Inquisitor-Advertiser for pupils to learn drawing and the French language (fig. 12). About twenty-five
students signed up. Two months later he began teaching at
a Miss Deeds’s school for “females of all ages” (fig. 13). In
addition, Lucy taught the usual elementary subjects to private pupils at her home. For some, she even provided music
lessons. Without regular work, however, John turned to
portrait painting, the bread and butter for almost all
American artists in the first half of the nineteenth century,
charging five or ten dollars a head. Among his subjects
were Dr. Drake, the Rev. and Mrs. Elijah Slack, John
Cleves Symmes, and General and Mrs. William Lytle.
It is not clear how long Audubon remained employed by
the Western Museum. Sometime during the spring of
1820, probably in April, Drake informed him that the
museum could no longer afford his services—not that he
had received any pay yet—but it was clear to all that funding for the museum had dried up. The museum did hold an
official opening celebration in June at which Drake singled
out Audubon for his talent, mentioning that his portfolio
already included drawings of many birds not in Wilson’s
American Ornithology.
While the Audubons were scrambling to make ends
meet, the Long Expedition arrived in Cincinnati. Major
f ig . 1 1 , op p o s i t e . John James Audubon, Bonaparte’s Gull, ca. 1821,
1830. Study for Havell plate no. 324, watercolor, collage, graphite, pastel, black chalk, gouache, and black ink on paper, 211⁄4 x 153⁄16", laid on
card. All three birds were drawn separately and pasted on the background. Specimens were obtained in Ohio in 1820, while on an outing
with Robert Best, Curator of the Cincinnati Museum at that time.
Collection of the New-York Historical Society. Digital image created by
Oppenheimer Editions. Object #1863.17.324.
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Stephen H. Long, of the Army Corps of Engineers, was on
his way west. He and his party arrived in May on the
steamboat Western Engineer, designed especially for exploring the upper reaches of the Missouri and Platte Rivers.
The boat measured 75 feet by a very narrow 13 feet. It carried several cannon, boasted a mast and a sail, and vented
waste steam from its serpent-carved prow. One presumes
that this was designed to intimidate native peoples. The
crew included Thomas Say, an entomologist, and Titian
f ig . 1 2 , a b ov e . Advertisement for a drawing school run by John J.
Audubon, from the Cincinnati Inquisitor-Advertiser, June 27, 1820.
Courtesy of the Cincinnati Museum Center.
f ig . 1 3 , b e l o w . Advertisement for Miss Deeds’ School, where
Audubon taught drawing and painting, from the Western Spy and
Cincinnati General Advertiser, March 16, 1820. Courtesy of the Cincinnati
Museum Center.
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Imprint
Peale, artist, taxidermist, and the youngest son of artist
Charles Willson Peale. One evening, those two men spent
several hours looking with great admiration at Audubon’s
work. Their enthusiastic support provided an important
emotional boost to Audubon’s developing plans.
With apparently little future in Cincinnati, John and
Lucy made a decision—and it was very much a joint decision—to go ahead with the concept of a large book on
American birds that would be far superior to Alexander
Wilson’s work, both in number of species represented and
in their illustration. It was also a rash and romantic decision which would ultimately require Audubon to become
an artist, writer, salesman, and collections agent. But it did
provide him with a goal that he eagerly embraced. The
patient and loyal Lucy must have recognized that this was
her husband’s destiny, and, of course, hers as well. The plan
had Audubon traveling to New Orleans where he would
explore the region, draw birds, and find a way to support a
family. Lucy and the children would follow later, after John
had established himself in the Crescent City. Before
departing Cincinnati, Audubon purchased a calf-bound
book the size of a ledger, into which he would pour his
observations about the trip. This journal is now in the collection of Harvard’s Houghton Library.
Audubon traveled light. On the first day he recorded his
meager possessions: several books, two guns and tackle,
watercolors, brushes, pencils, chalk, sheets of art paper in a
tubular tin case, wire for mounting, a violin, a flute, and one
wide-brimmed hat. No doubt he also brought an extra set
of clothes, for he had promised Lucy he would change his
shirt every week. “My talents are to be my support,” he
wrote, “and my enthusiasm my guide in my difficulties.” In
exchange for free passage on a large flatboat, he agreed to
supply fresh game for the crew and the several passengers.
In addition, Audubon carried four letters of introduction,
provided by Dr. Drake, Rev. Slack, General William
Henry Harrison, and Senator Henry Clay, the latter’s
addressed to officers and agents of the federal government.
He also arranged to bring along his most gifted student,
thirteen-year-old Joseph Mason, the son of a local printer
and bookseller. Mason had displayed a particular talent for
drawing plants, and in subsequent months he would draw
the vegetation on which some of Audubon’s birds rest.
Some years later, their friendship disintegrated when
Mason learned that Audubon had left his name off many
of the plates for Birds of America.
Thus, late in the afternoon on October 12, 1820, man and
boy departed from Cincinnati’s bustling public landing. We
can assume that Lucy and the children were there to see them
off, but an air of sadness must have settled over the family
because they planned on a separation of some seven months.
That proved wildly optimistic. Fourteen very difficult months
passed before they were reunited. Lucy divided her time
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between Cincinnati and Louisville, teaching when she could.
When Audubon could, which was very irregular, he sent
money to her; and Daniel Drake eventually came up with
$400 in back pay, which either indicates that Audubon
worked for the museum less than four months or that the
museum remained unable to fulfill its financial commitment.
This became the bitterest period in Lucy Audubon’s life.
That first night on the Ohio, the flatboat floated only
eighteen miles, and in the morning Audubon and young
Mason went ashore to procure food for the day. Their hunt
produced thirty quail, one woodcock, twenty-seven gray
squirrels, a barn owl, and a juvenile turkey vulture. Still
moving with the sluggish river, the flatboat reached
Louisville and then, on November 2, Henderson, the scene
of so many sad memories. Three weeks later they stopped
in New Madrid, a shabby Missouri village almost
destroyed eight years earlier by the great earthquake that
bears its name. On January 2, they tied up at Natchez,
where Audubon hustled portraits in hopes of sending
money back to Lucy. Eight days later they arrived in New
Orleans, twelve weeks after departing Cincinnati.
Thus began the second half of Audubon’s life. He spent
several years in Louisiana, moving from New Orleans to
Bayou Sara to Natchez and back to New Orleans. Portrait
painting provided an irregular income, and when necessary
he tutored young Louisianans in painting, music, dancing,
and fencing. After Lucy and the children finally joined him
in December 1821, she also worked as a teacher and governess. But always there were birds. These years produced
some of his finest work. In 1824, he traveled to Philadelphia
to seek a publisher for his book. This proved unsuccessful,
and two years later he left for Great Britain and future fame.
In London, Audubon made his fortunate and life-changing
connection with Robert Havell Jr. and began the process of
turning his remarkable portfolio of drawings into the 435
hand-colored engravings that we are so familiar with today.
For the next twelve years he traveled between the United
States and England. Indeed, during that time, he made
eight Atlantic crossings. In Great Britain, he visited not
only London, but Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and
Edinburgh, in attempts to find subscribers for his work in
progress. He also managed to visit France on two occasions,
where he gained public recognition but few subscriptions.
During these years, Lucy twice joined him in England, but
for most of this period they were separated, and her letters
reflect the strains on their marriage. When Audubon was in
the United States, he also sought out potential purchasers of
f i g . 1 4 , o p p o s i t e . Broadside advertisement for the Western
Museum, ca. 1825–1850. Wood engraving, 13 x 6" (sheet). Courtesy of
the Cincinnati Museum Center.
vitz
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16
Imprint
his book, at approximately a thousand dollars a set. But all
the time, he never stopped drawing. Between 1829 and
1837, he visited upstate New York, Nova Scotia and
Labrador, the newly established Republic of Texas, South
Carolina, and much of Florida, including Key West and the
Dry Tortugas. It would be hard to find another American
who had visited as much of the United States as Audubon.
With the publication of the great double elephant folio
edition of Birds of America, Audubon secured his reputation.
He went on to produce the companion five-volume
Ornithological Biography, which provided the descriptive text
for Birds of America, and later he produced another multivolume production on the Viviparous Quadrupeds of North
America, along with several other works. He was accepted as
a fellow in the Royal Society and the Linnean Society of
London, as well as the French Academy of Sciences, and
spent his last years living comfortably in a house overlooking
the Hudson River, north of New York City.
But, we are not quite finished with his Cincinnati connection. On two later occasions Audubon stopped in
Cincinnati while traveling from Pittsburgh to Louisville.
In November 1829, although he was unable to see Dr.
Drake, he did stop by the Western Museum. “It scarcely
improves since my last visit,” he wrote to a friend in
Philadelphia, “except indeed by wax figures and such other
shows as are best suited to make money and the least so to
improve the mind.” The Western Museum had indeed fallen on hard times. Sold by the original managers, it had
now become a museum of entertainment, for which wax
figures and its so-called “Infernal Regions” (fig. 14) proved
highly popular—more popular apparently than stuffed
birds and fish. Fourteen years later, Audubon again stopped
briefly in the city, arriving at three o’clock in the morning
and departing eight hours later. There is no record that he
even left the boat.
In the 1870s and 1880s, Cincinnati could boast of having two complete sets of The Birds of America. In 1870 the
Cincinnati Public Library acquired its copy, which had
been originally purchased by a Dr. Thomas Edmondson, a
wealthy physician and patron of the arts in Baltimore.
Several years after Edmondson’s death, his library was sold
at auction in 1870. The four-volume Birds of America and
the companion five-volume Ornithological Biography
together fetched $750. It is presumed that the buyer was
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Joseph Longworth of Cincinnati, the son of Nicholas
Longworth, for it was he who sold the Birds to the library
for $1,000. It now rests in a handsome case in the
Cincinnati Room on the library’s third floor. The other set
belonged to Henry Probasco, one of Cincinnati’s wealthiest citizens during the nineteenth century, and the donor of
the magnificent fountain that sits at the corner of Fifth and
Vine streets. Probasco, who made his fortune as a partner
in a wholesale hardware company, acquired an extensive
library after he retired in 1856. Along with early English
Bibles, several rare editions of the First, Second, and
Fourth Folios of Shakespeare, a 1497 copy of Dante’s
Divine Comedy, and scores of other wonderful books,
Probasco had purchased his Audubon. Its provenance is
unknown. Unfortunately, his library did not remain in the
city. After enjoying a lavish life-style, Probasco found it
necessary to sell his collection in 1890, and it went to the
recently-founded Newberry Library in Chicago. However,
the Newberry did not keep the Audubon set. As a result of
an agreement among the Chicago Public Library, the
Newberry, and the John Crerar Library, The Birds of
America went to the latter in 1897. It is now housed at the
University of Chicago.
And finally, there is the case of what might have been. In
the 1840s the board of the Mercantile Library—the venerable 178-year-old institution in which this talk was presented—discussed the purchase of an Audubon. This
probably was the double elephant folio edition. However,
by the time a decision was reached, the set was no longer
available. In late 1859 the Mercantile Library board again
entertained the idea of purchasing an Audubon. I believe
this to have been the rare Bien edition, but, since it was
being released in installments, the board chose to wait for
the completion of the set. Then the Civil War came, and
no more is heard of Audubon in the minutes of the
Mercantile Library board meetings.
In addition to works by the artist now housed in
Cincinnati collections, a three-dimensional monument to
John Audubon’s time in the area can be visited. Directly
across the river from Cincinnati, in the Riverside area of
Covington, Kentucky, a bronze statue stands. Audubon is
looking out over the Licking River, with sketchbook in
hand. You are welcome to ask him any questions—but he
is not much of a conversationalist.
vitz
notes
This article is developed from the talk presented at the
AHPCS annual meeting in Cincinnati in May 2013.
1. Audubon’s self-portrait painted at Beech Woods, is reproduced as the
frontispiece to Audubon’s America: The Narratives and Experience of
John James Audubon, edited by Donald C. Peattie (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Co.; The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1940). The self-portrait can also be viewed in Home to Roost: Ornithological Collections at
Lehigh University, a web exhibition on the Lehigh University Library
Services site (http://www.lehigh.edu/).
2. Regarding Audubon’s avian eating preferences, five of the references
come from Durant and Harwood, p. 122. Reference to the taste of
flicker and cedar waxwing come from Olson, pages 158 and 122
respectively.
3. Cincinnati Inquisitor-Advertiser, February 29, 1820, p. 3.
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17
bibliography
Adams, Alexander B. John James Audubon: a Biography.
New York, 1966.
Audubon, John James. The Audubon Reader. Edited by
Richard Rhodes. New York, 2006.
________. Ornithological Biography, or An Account of the
Habits of Birds of the United States of America, Accompanied
by Descriptions of the Objects Represented in the Work
Entitled “The Birds of America,” and Interspersed with
Delineations of American Scenery and Manners. 5 vols.
Edinburgh: A. Black, 1831-1849.
Brenner, Barbara. On the Frontier with Mr. Audubon. New
York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1977.
Durant, Mary B, and Michael Harwood. On the Road with
John James Audubon. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1980.
Ford, Alice. John James Audubon. New York: Abbeyville
Press, 1988.
Gillespie, Dorothy. John James Audubon: Relations of the
Naturalist with the Western Museum at Cincinnati.
[Cincinnati?]: Cincinnati Society of Natural History,
[1937].
Harris, Edward. Up the Missouri with Audubon: the Journal
of Edward Harris. Edited and annotated by John
Francis McDermott. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1951.
Herrick, Francis H. Audubon, the Naturalist: a History of His
Life and Times. New York: Appleton-Century, 1938.
Keating, L. Clark. Audubon: the Kentucky Years. Lexington:
University Press of Kentucky, 1976.
Olson, Roberta J. M. Audubon’s Aviary: the Original
Watercolors for “The Birds of America”. New York: NewYork Historical Society, 2012.
Rhodes, Richard. John James Audubon: The Making of an
American. New York: Knopf, 2004.
Vedder, Lee. John James Audubon and the “Birds of America:”
A Visionary Achievement in Ornithological Illustration.
San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 2006.
Laura Wasowicz
Monkeys, Misrule, and the Birth of
an American Identity
in Picture Books of the Rising Republic
M
onkeys became playful fixtures in American picture books issued between 1790 and 1860. They
populate nearly forty American children’s books
published in that seventy-year span, long before Curious
George popped onto the scene.1 This debut of the picture
book monkey reflects the publication of natural histories in
the late eighteenth century that featured monkeys. The
influential writer Oliver Goldmith’s History of the Earth and
Animated Nature had an extensive chapter on monkeys, and
his text was quickly adapted for the use of schools by Mary
Pilkington, thus increasing access to information about
monkeys and their habitat for both adults and children.2
Monkeys were teeming inhabitants of exotic hinterlands in
the Old and New Worlds. These newly discovered creatures
quickly became fashionable inhabitants of children’s books
as well, both as mischievous pets and eventually as freewheeling proto-human agents.
In children’s books, these free-agent monkeys are clearly
distinguished from dogs, donkeys, pigs, and other animals
trained as learned animals by humans. A learned animal
constantly under the master’s control is quite different
from a willful, untrained monkey. Cultural scholar Brett
Mizelle observes, “The blurring of boundaries between
humans and animals helps to account for the tremendous
popularity of performances of ‘learned pigs,’ which
amazed and amused audiences by spelling, solving mathematical problems, and answering questions by picking up
cards placed upon the floor. In the late eighteenth century the learned pig proved a sensation in London.”3 One
l au ra was o w ic z is Curator of Children’s Literature at the American
Antiquarian Society. For the past twenty-six years, she has worked to
acquire, catalog, and provide reference service for the AAS collection of
twenty-four thousand children’s books issued between 1650 and 1899.
She has written articles on various aspects of nineteenth-century
American children’s book publishing, picture book iconography, and child
reading habits. She is also the editor of the Nineteenth-Century American
Children’s Book Trade Directory, available on the AAS website
(http://www.americanantiquarian.org). Wasowicz holds a master’s degree
in Library Science from the University of Chicago, a master’s degree in
History from Clark University, and a bachelor’s degree in History from
Rockford College.
18
fine example of a learned dog is found in the early nineteenth-century picture book Peter Pry’s Puppet Show. Part
the II.4 The illustrations depict a variety show of curiosities, including a copper-plate image of two small children
watching a trained dog pick out letter cards under the
watchful eye of its master (fig. 1). The dog wears no
clothes and is clearly controlled by the master. The verse
text reinforces the importance of literacy to its young readers: “A learned Dog you now behold/ Much more so than
his betters./ Do you by him example take,/ And study well
your Letters.”5 The children in the scene look as though
they are curiously taking in the dog’s “wisdom.”
f ig . 1 . A learned dog and his master, in Peter Pry’s Puppet Show. Part
the II (Philadelphia: Morgan & Sons, ca. 1821–1834), 7. Copper
engraving, probably by William Charles, 5 x 41⁄16" (plate). Courtesy of
the American Antiquarian Society.
wa s o w i c z
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f ig . 2 . Norwegian Man/Orangutan, in People of All Nations: An Useful
Toy for Girl or Boy (Albany: Henry Collins Southwick, ca. 1812), 30–31.
Wood engraving by an unknown artist, two adjacent pages each measuring 23⁄4 x 27⁄8 ". Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.
Unlike the domestic animal, the monkey emerges into
early nineteenth-century children’s picture books as a free
agent, frequently occupying the liminal space between
human and animal. This ambiguity is marvelously captured in People of All Nations: An Useful Toy for Girl or Boy
(fig. 2). Children’s books depicting various ethnic groups
in native costume were highly popular throughout the
nineteenth century. This is a fairly early example in miniature format. In People of All Nations, the ethnic groups are
arranged alphabetically, providing young readers with a
secular counterpart to the religiously inspired alphabet
found in The New England Primer, a universally recognized source of alphabet instruction at the time. Alphabet
books have been recently rediscovered by researchers as
rich repositories of culturally recognized racial and ethnic
stereotypes, and indeed provide rich fodder. In this case, a
neatly dressed Norwegian man appears as the opposite (in
more ways than one) to the orangutan. The description for
the latter is quite interesting: “An Ourang-Outang is a
wild man of the woods in the East Indies. He sleeps under
trees, and builds himself a hut; he cannot speak, but when
the natives make a fire in the woods, he will come to warm
himself.”6 The wood-engraved illustration and this short
passage reflect how fluid popular attitudes were toward
the distinction between human and animal. The orangutan (which we now consider to be an animal) is classed
with other humans, and called “a wild man” in the description. At the same time, there was debate in the AngloAmerican world about the degree to which African slaves
and other indigenous people were truly human. For this
reason, this image of the orangutan provides an important
clue to our modern understanding of cultural attitudes
toward race, ethnicity, and ultimately, humanity in the
early American republic.
Richard Johnson’s The History of a Doll contains one of
the earliest monkey characters in an Anglo-American
children’s story.7 Johnson wrote a number of titles for the
English pioneer children’s book publisher John Newbery.
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Imprint
f ig . 3 . The wily pet monkey grasps the ill-fated doll, in Richard
Johnson, The History of a Doll (Boston: John W. Folsom, 1798), 25.
Wood engraving by an unknown artist, 37⁄8 x 2 1⁄2". Courtesy of the
American Antiquarian Society.
He wrote History of a Doll in 1780, and it was first issued
in the United States by the Boston publisher John W.
Folsom in 1798. The doll’s fate is ultimately at the mercy
of a wily monkey that is definitely a creature of the New
World. The story chronicles the adventures and substantial tribulations of a doll. It is nearly destroyed by her first
mistress’ brother, and later by a sailor while en route to the
West Indies with its second mistress. But her trials are not
over; the master of the house kept a “mischievous monkey,” which seizes it while the doll’s mistress sees to company at the door (fig. 3). The accompanying woodcut
shows the doll in the monkey’s clutches, the open door in
the background revealing a palm tree and two human figures (the shorter figure represents the young mistress
greeting the adult visitor). This monkey belongs to the
exotic world of the West Indies, and it mishandles the doll
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(properly dressed in long skirt, kerchief, and bonnet) with
abandon. Upon returning to see her doll “in the paws of
the savage monkey,” the young mistress gives a “terrible
scream,” whereupon, fearing “the punishment he
deserved,” the monkey takes the doll in its mouth and
climbs up the chimney to the roof-top (this bit of misbehavior will be repeated in the humorous nineteenth-century poem The Monkey’s Frolic). The monkey willfully
takes matters into his own hands, and unlike the first mistress’ brother, shows no regret for his actions. The doll’s
current mistress runs out of the house to find the monkey
clutching her doll (now “black as soot itself could be”) up
on the roof. A servant soon arrives to shoot the monkey
dead, and the doll falls into a nearby pond, horribly
scratched and disfigured by the monkey’s paws. This monkey was given free rein, but used his power within the
household to steal and maim the prized London doll. His
bad behavior echoes the brother’s mistreatment, but his
punishment is not guilt, but death.8
This trope of a monkey mishandling a female object is
played out with a very different and humorous result in
the popular nineteenth-century picture book The Monkey’s
Frolic.9 It was first issued by the London publisher John
Harris in 1823, and was reissued on both sides of the
Atlantic through at least the 1850s. Unlike the relatively
crude woodcut relief images found in The History of a Doll
and People of All Nations, The Monkey’s Frolic has images
produced from engraved copper plates using an intaglio
process in which the image is cut into a copper plate using
sharp tools; the furrowed lines made by the tools hold the
ink, and the image is transferred onto paper using a special plate press. With its capacity for producing finely
detailed images, the intaglio method dominated the
graphic production of separately issued prints (particularly political cartoons) during the first three decades of the
nineteenth century, and its popularity extended to picture
books.10 The Monkey’s Frolic is a bit bigger than the first
two books, reflecting the greater availability of paper for
picture books by the late 1820s. Its letterpress text was
printed on a conventional hand press, making it easier to
correct any textual errors.
The story’s action takes place in a well-furnished house
in which the pet monkey is literally granted the run of the
house and free rein over his activities. Unlike the orangutan in the wild and the doll-tormenting pet, this monkey
f ig . 4 , op p o s i t e . Mischievous Pug “shaves” and binds the cat, in
The Monkey’s Frolic, a Humorous Tale (Lancaster, MA: Carter, Andrews &
Co.; Boston: Carter & Hendee; Baltimore: Charles Carter, ca.
1828–1830), leaf 2. Copper engraving, probably by Joseph Andrews,
67⁄8 x 41⁄4". Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.
wa s o w i c z
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Imprint
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wa s o w i c z
is fully dressed (and grandly at that) in what resembles a
military uniform complete with epaulettes on his jacket,
but the ruffles on his pants signal that this power suit
might be more the stuff of childish play. Pug begins his
frolic by attempting to shave Puss the pet cat (fig. 4). Puss
is described as a female, and depicted as a naked pet,
reflecting her remove from the clothed, human-like status
of the monkey. After attempting to charm her with a
greeting, Pug resolves to shave her with a scary looking
(but actually harmless) ivory letter opener. Although Puss
tries to escape, Pug the monkey “pursued, and regardless
of struggle or prayer,/ Fast bound her, at last, to the back
of a chair.” Thus restrained, the female puss can only rely
on her wailing to get the attention and protection of the
household’s human members. The cook responds to her
mewing, but the wily Pug absconds with Puss in his arms
headed for the roof-top.
The text is always careful to soften the seemingly true
situation depicted in the illustrations. As in the tense
rooftop situation depicted in The History of a Doll, the
human members of the household try to intervene (fig. 5).
In this case, when a servant climbs a ladder to reach Pug
and his cat hostage, the monkey exercises both free will
and initiative by throwing a roof tile at his “assailant.”
Ultimately, Pug was met with laughter, not bullets, as he
wiped the soapsuds off of Miss Puss’ face “as Nurse would
a child.”11 The bottom engraving shows Pug easily walking with the cat as he would on the ground, the flying owl
in the background reminding the viewer that they are
indeed up in the air. This image of a male monkey physically holding a female cat hostage is replicated not only in
the many reissues of The Monkey’s Frolic but it also finds its
way into the wider print culture for adults in the disturbing image of The Cat’s-Paw engraved by Robert Graves
(1798–1873) after a design by British artist Edward
Henry Landseer (1802–1873).12 Landseer specialized in
humorous and sentimental depictions of animals, and his
work appeared in pictorial books for children and adults in
the nineteenth century. In this case, the male monkey is
holding his hostage’s paw onto a stove, her kittens in the
basket above witnessing the gruesome scene (fig. 6). As in
The Monkey’s Frolic, the harshness of the image is softened
by the text; the accompanying poem, describes a coquettish cat who flirts with the monkey, who being the wily
f ig . 5 , op p o s i t e . Pug throws the roof tile and carries the cat to the
chimney, in The Monkey’s Frolic, a Humorous Tale (Lancaster, MA: Carter,
Andrews & Co.; Boston: Carter & Hendee; Baltimore: Charles Carter,
ca. 1828–1830), leaf 4. Copper engraving, probably by Joseph Andrews,
67⁄8 x 41⁄4". Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.
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23
f ig . 6 . The Cat’s-Paw, in The Forget-Me-Not (London: R. Akerman;
Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1830), 6th Plate. Copper engraving by
Robert Graves after a design by Edward Henry Landseer, 51⁄2 x 33⁄8".
Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.
creature he “naturally” is, uses their familiarity to control
her paw to grab a hot chestnut roasting on the stove. The
cat retaliates by scratching the monkey and breaking his
hold; but her victory is not recorded in the illustration.
Unlike Landseer’s cat, Miss Puss does not break free,
but she does engage with Pug in a rooftop adventure. The
daredevil monkey swings with the cat onto an adjacent
rooftop, where they slide through a chimney (shades of
the ill-fated London doll), and bound into the sick room
of a man suffering from gout. These uninvited visitors literally scare the invalid into good health, and Pug is hailed
as a hero. He shakes hands (like a gentleman) with the
cured man’s doctor before returning home with Miss Puss.
In the 1840s, New York picture-book publisher Charles P.
Huestis recast the story as a cheaply-printed woodengraved picture book in which the terse rhyme is
exchanged for verbose prose. Pug becomes Jocko, and
Miss Puss becomes a French cat named Miss Minette, but
the iconography is essentially the same. The pet monkey,
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Imprint
f ig . 7. Country Bumpkin Pug asks for directions, in Pug’s Tour through
Europe [Philadelphia?: Morgan & Yeager?, ca, 1824–1825?], 1. Copper
engraving, probably by Hugh Anderson, 41⁄4 x 31⁄2". Courtesy of the
American Antiquarian Society.
by his wily charm, occupies the ambiguous space between
willful human and subservient animal.
The monkey character gains even more ground as a fullblown tourist and would-be bon vivant in the picture book
Pug’s Tour through Europe. Although first published in
London, the edition held at the American Antiquarian
Society contains text adapted to an American audience.13
Unlike The Monkey’s Frolic, the illustrations and accompanying captions are both engraved on metal. Two of the
engravings are signed “HA” (see fig. 9) and could be the
work of Hugh Anderson (1782–1866) who was working
in Philadelphia at the time and contributed an engraving
to at least one book also containing an engraving by
Joseph Yeager, a partner in the firm Morgan & Yeager,
picture-book publishers.
This edition of Pug’s Tour is definitely an American
knock-off. American allusions are inserted in the first
verse (fig. 7): “A country Pug to New-York came,/ A raw
young yankee Squire,/ Awkward his dress, his gait the
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same,/ His full-moon cheeks on fire.”15 Pug might be fully
dressed but his attire is that of a country bumpkin—oldfashioned knee britches, vest, and frock coat—which
might do in rural Connecticut, but not New York in the
1820s. With curved walking stick in hand, he appears
fresh in town—and looks like he is asking directions of a
London beefeater (the text was changed more than the
illustrations). The text says he was “Exciting laughter and
surprise,/And something too like pity.”16 It is not an accident that Pug is posed in front of menagerie animals in
their cages; in fact an unclothed long-tailed monkey is in
the upper right, as though mimicking the monkey mimicking a man. Pug, like his unclothed counterpart, is on
display as an unusual (if not exotic) creature, engaging our
laughter and pity.
Pug goes to a tailor where he ditches his country duds
for long pants and a tailored waistcoat: “Fine cloths
bespoke. Snip knew his trade,/ And fitted him quite
handy;/ The Bumpkin grew a dashing blade,/ A first-rate
laughing dandy.”17 Not only do we see Pug in his new
outfit, it is as though the clothes direct him in a sleek,
postured attitude. The tailor is himself quite natty and
forceful, as he presides over the actions of the new Pug
(fig. 8). The tools of his trade (the scissors, the fabric, and
hanging wigs) are all in plain view. A well-dressed couple
curiously observe Pug through the window, as though
they are watching a caged monkey.
The newly outfitted Pug resolves to take “The Tour of
Europe and forsake Columbia for some years./ On board
a steam ship, Calais bound,/ the youth embark’d at Old
Slip [the Southern tip of Manhattan].”18 So although the
images closely match the English edition, care was made
to adjust the text for an American audience, turning the
English Pug into a Yankee going abroad. Pug skillfully
embraces and imitates the European locals around him. In
France, Pug offers snuff to a lady with a low bow. In
Venice, he dances with masked carnival goers, mistaking
them for apes, reminding the viewer that friendly revelers
are not necessarily friends.19
With detail worthy of a political caricature, Pug’s visit
to an Italian art gallery is lampooned (fig. 9). He is shown
examining a fine painting of St. Peter’s Basilica, the seat
of Christianity, through an eyeglass. A sculpture of the
wolf nursing Romulus and Remus is in the foreground, as
if to remind Pug that the civilization of Rome was started through the close union of pagan god, man, and animal. Pug seems too intent on appraising the painting of
the contemporary Rome to pay any attention to civilization’s (and his own) humble beginnings. The text echoes
the irony: “Paintings he’d say were so, and so,/ Sculptures
were, such, and such;/ And each he’d criticise [sic],
although/ A pig knows just as much.”20 This line essentially equates our monkey dandy with an unclothed
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25
f ig . 8 . Pug tries on his new suit, in Pug’s Tour through Europe
[Philadelphia?: Morgan & Yeager?, ca, 1824–1825?], 2. Copper engraving probably by Hugh Anderson, 41⁄4 x 31⁄2". Courtesy of the American
Antiquarian Society.
f ig . 9 . Pug visits a Roman art gallery, in Pug’s Tour through Europe
[Philadelphia?: Morgan & Yeager?, ca, 1824–1825?], 7. Copper engraving probably by Hugh Anderson, 41⁄4 x 31⁄2". Courtesy of the American
Antiquarian Society.
“learned” (i.e., trained) pig. The urn to the right of the
painting bears the initial “HA” (conceivably engraver
Hugh Anderson). Pug’s European trip comes to an
abrupt end when he encounters Greeks fighting the
Ottoman Turks for their independence (a very real event
that lasted from 1821 to 1832). Our departing dandy
wishes the “Brave Greeks” well. Pug acts as a comic filter
to convey the real violence and tribulation in Greece that
was being recorded by the poet Lord Byron and the
American medical reformer Samuel Gridley Howe at the
same time.
Some thirty-five years later, a truly American monkey
emerges from the pages of The Discontented Monkey, a picture book issued just as Charles Darwin was publishing
his On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,
and the debate concerning slavery reached a fever pitch.21
This sophisticated nineteenth-century fable is attributed
to “Klaver Oldfellah” (whose identity has not surfaced),
but its black-line wood-engraved illustrations were
designed by the well known social caricaturist Augustus
Hoppin (1828–1896). Raised in an upper-class
Providence family and trained in law at Harvard, Hoppin
quickly abandoned a legal career to pursue art.22 He particularly excelled at caricature, and his eye for poking fun
at American society is evident in his illustrations for The
Discontented Monkey. The picture book’s title signals a different type of monkey portrayal. The monkeys in the earlier books are mischievous, wily creatures graced with the
gift of mimicry; but the adjective “discontented” alludes to
the very human ability to aspire, even dream, and this
f ig . 1 0 , n e x t pag e . Monkeys paying homage to the almighty dollar, in Klaver Oldfellah, The Discontented Monkey (Boston: C. H.
Brainard; New York: Dinsmore & Co., 1859. Cover imprint: Boston:
Clark, Shepard & Brown), inner wrapper. Wood engraving by Henry
Bricher and Stephen S. C. Russell after a design by Augustus Hoppin,
67⁄8 x 51⁄4". Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.
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story is essentially a dream tale. First of all, the hero Jocko
is not a freewheeling pet or an exceptional animal functioning in a world run by humans; he lives with his mother in a monkey community complete with social gradations. Jocko yearns to live in the fashionable West End of
the wood, although his wise mother dismisses its inhabitants as mostly upstarts who seek to live close to the aristocracy. Disregarding his mother’s counsel, the aspiring
Jocko sets up household in a rotten stump, but discovers
he cannot fully participate in West End society because he
does not have a fashionably long tail; in fact, he has just a
nub of tail because his father had it cut off when he was a
baby to avoid it getting caught in a hyena trap. A frustrated
Jocko appeals to the advice of a human dervish who advises
Jocko to visit an oracle at the Temple of Terminus, which
Hoppin portrays with biting wit (fig. 10). We see the
smoky altar to the “almighty” American dollar flanked by
tall apelike soldiers (one wears an Asian straw hat and the
other a fez). The monkey pilgrims appear to represent a
cross section of classes: one female wears a fashionable
hoopskirt, and a portly male has a proper suit jacket, while
the patched pants of one prostrate pilgrim are clearly visible. Perhaps Hoppin wanted to comment on the rising
power of the American dollar around the world, as well as
its power to draw the homage of all its inhabitants around
it in ways that reform ideology, or religion, or even secular
morality, could not.
Jocko’s wish is eventually granted through the intercession of a visionary, “tail-spinning” poet (who is not pictured
and seems human), and the aspiring monkey quickly
employs the services of a “tail dresser” to get it curled to
fashionable perfection (fig. 11). The tail dressing shop is
run by a “ribbed-nosed baboon” which Hoppin portrays
with great anatomical attention. Apparently he is aware of
the various zoological studies of primates coming to the
fore at the time. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means
of Natural Selection was published in London in November
1859, and it must have heightened awareness of primates
and their biological relationship to humans.
When Jocko discovers that his curled tail upsets his
center of balance, he goes to get it ironed out at a laundry
run by Sufferer the tailor, an orangutan (fig. 12). Once
again, Hoppin’s drawing breathes unique life into every
figure in the picture, from the calm face of Sufferer pre-
siding over the iron, to the bespectacled tailor threading
the needle, and the fleeing backside of our hero Jocko.
Tortured by the heat on his tail, Jocko runs out of the
laundry, only to have his tail mistaken by monkey firefighters as a hose, and they hold it directly to the fire.
When he realizes how badly he has misspent his life with
foolish aspirations, Jocko awakes in his mother’s habitation, and he realizes that it was all just a nightmare.
With its wordy, cumbersome prose, the real genius of
The Discontented Monkey lies in its pictures that appeal on
many levels to both children and adults. The co-publisher Shepard, Clark & Brown published both fairy tales and
fiction for children. An advertisement on the inside
wrapper for the book’s other Boston publisher, Charles
H. Brainard, describes him as a print and book publisher,
and lists portraits of celebrities for sale including the abolitionists Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips, and William
Lloyd Garrison. As a printed artifact, The Discontented
Monkey is literally the product of an American reform
and intellectual culture that is redefining what it means to
be human.
An image of monkeys from the anonymously issued
ABC Book I sums up both the playful and liminal role that
monkey characters occupied in children’s picture books in
the first half of the nineteenth century (fig. 13).23 The
illustration shows three monkeys climbing a tree that has
a bell tied onto it with a rope (thus telling the viewer that
the tree “belongs” to a human). The rhyme caption accompanying the image reminds the reader of monkeys as a
type of humorous mirror echoing (but not quite replicating) human behavior: “The monkeys are a cunning race/
So full of antics and grimace,/ Who strut and in our faces
grin,/ As tho’ they had created been,/ To let us see as in a
glass,/ Our follies all before us pass.” 24 In this case, the
monkeys are naked animals, who play in the tree at and for
the pleasure of humans, both the ostensible, invisible
owner of the bell-entwined tree, and the human reader
viewing the image. As seen in the stories about the illfated London doll and her monkey tormentor, the frolicking monkey Pug, the Yankee traveler Pug, and Jocko the
discontented monkey, these monkeys play out aspects of
willful misbehavior, humorous misrule, ambitious mimicry, and dreamy aspiration that could be attributed to
human characters. Richard Johnson’s portrayal of the pet
f ig . 1 1 , p r e c e di n g pag e . Jocko gets his tale curled, in Klaver
Oldfellah, The Discontented Monkey (Boston: C. H. Brainard; New York:
Dinsmore & Co., 1859. Cover imprint: Boston: Clark, Shepard &
Brown), plate 4. Wood engraving by Henry Bricher and Stephen S. C.
Russell after a design by Augustus Hoppin, 67⁄8 x 51⁄4". Courtesy of the
American Antiquarian Society.
f ig . 1 2 , op p o s i t e . Jocko gets his tail ironed, in Klaver Oldfellah,
The Discontented Monkey (Boston: C. H. Brainard; New York: Dinsmore
& Co., 1859. Cover imprint: Boston: Clark, Shepard & Brown), plate 5.
Wood engraving by Henry Bricher and Stephen S. C. Russell after a
design by Augustus Hoppin, 67⁄8 x 51⁄4". Courtesy of the American
Antiquarian Society.
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monkey in The History of a Doll offers a severe cautionary
example of how even a pampered pet can pay with his life
for mishandling a girl’s beloved doll (amplifying the punishment received by a naughty brother for a similar
offense). Not unlike a slave, the monkey’s life was to a fair
extent expendable, and completely in the hands of its
owner. In contrast, the male monkey protagonists in The
Monkey’s Frolic, Pug’s Tour through Europe, and The
Discontented Monkey occupy an exceptional space between
humans and other animals, which includes the human
trappings of clothing and free agency. In The Monkey’s
Frolic, the prankster Pug is given free rein by his master
with no effective curbs, and as a result of his antics with
the cat, he solves the human invalid’s problem by scaring
him into good health. Though treated as an exotic oddity
by humans, the touring Pug in Pug’s Tour through Europe
has full access to fine clothing and international travel as
he has money, ambition, and mimicry skills to fit into any
scene, be it a Roman art museum or a Greek battlefield.
Finally, the discontented Jocko’s dream of upward social
mobility is a comic cameo portrait of an America aspiring
to greater imperial, commercial, and cultural dominance
on the world stage. Augustus Hoppin’s dreamy, socially
ambitious, fashionably aware monkey reflects the insecurity and ambiguity of an America grasping to achieve a
European level of civilization on New World terms. To no
small extent, the definition of what it meant to be a truly
civilized human was complicated by the contentious
debate in the United States over the morality of slavery.
The momentous natural history discoveries published at
the same time, especially by Darwin, gives the picture
book monkey a greater luster as not just a clever pet but a
potential kinsman sharing an ambiguous genealogy with
humans in the shadowy past.
notes
1. The American Antiquarian Society holds at least fifty-eight children’s
books containing monkey characters issued between 1798 and 1899.
2. Oliver Goldsmith, An History of the Earth and Animated Nature
(Philadelphia: Mathew Carey, 1775), v. 2: 347–377; Oliver Goldsmith,
Goldsmith’s Natural History Abridged for the Use of Schools by Mrs.
Pilkington (Philadelphia: Jacob Johnson, 1801), v. 1:174–190.
3. Brett Mizelle, Pig (London: Reaktion Books, 2011), 97.
4. Peter Pry’s Puppet Show. Part the II (Philadelphia: Morgan & Sons,
ca.1821–1834).
5. Ibid., leaf 7.
f ig . 1 3 , op p o s i t e . Monkeys frolicking on a human-owned tree, in
ABC Book I. [United States?: s.n., ca. 1850–1870], 4. Wood engraving
printed in color; artist unknown. 61⁄4 x 37⁄8". Courtesy of the American
Antiquarian Society.
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6. People of All Nations: An Useful Toy for Girl or Boy. (Albany: Henry
Collins Southwick, ca. 1812), 30–31, 32.
7. Richard Johnson, The History of a Doll (Boston: John W. Folsom,
1798).
8. Ibid., 26.
9. The Monkey’s Frolic, a Humorous Tale (Lancaster, MA: Carter, Andrews
& Co.; Boston: Carter & Hendee; Baltimore: Charles Carter, ca.
1828–1830).
10. For more information on intaglio graphic process see Bamber
Gascoigne, How to Identify Prints, 2nd ed. (New York: Thames &
Hudson, 2004). Although copper plate engravings did not generally
appear on the same pages along with set type (it would have required
two separate runs on different presses), a few American publishers like
Johnson & Warner actually issued some picture books with copper
plate engravings appearing on pages alongside letterpress text. For
example, see A Peep into the Sports of Youth, and the Occupations and
Amusements of Age (Philadelphia: Johnson & Warner, 1809).
11. The Monkey’s Frolic, 5.
12. This image appears as a plate in the gift book The Forget Me Not
(London: R. Ackermann; Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1830). It was
eventually made into a lithographic parlor print by Nathaniel Currier.
13. Pug’s Tour through Europe [Philadelphia?: Morgan & Yeager?, ca.
1824–1825?].
14. Engravings by Hugh Anderson and Joseph Yeager appeared in
William Gibson, The Institutes and Practice of Surgery (Philadelphia:
Edward Parker, 1824).
15. Pug’s Tour through Europe, leaf 1.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., leaf 2.
18. Ibid., leaf 3.
19. For an in-depth discussion of Pug’s mimicry of various ethnic groups
and its cultural implications, see C. C. Barfoot, “Beyond Pug’s Tour:
Stereotyping Our Fellow Creatures” in Beyond Pug’s Tour: National
Literary Practice, edited by C. C.Barfoot (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi
B.V., 1997), 5–36.
20. Pug’s Tour Through Europe, leaf 7.
21. Klaver Oldfellah, The Discontented Monkey (Boston: C. H. Brainard;
New York: Dinsmore & Co., 1859. Cover imprint: Boston: Clark,
Shepard & Brown). Richard Ellis and James Brust have discussed the
small but provocative vein of trade cards sporting images of Darwininspired monkeys in their article “Nineteenth-Century Trade Cards
Related to Charles Darwin and the Theory of Evolution” Imprint 36,
no. 1 (Spring 2011): 23–34.
22. William Howe Downes writes of Hoppin, “His draftsmanship was
facile and expressive, giving, with economy of line, characteristic form
and action. His illustrative work carried out faithfully and often amplified the conception of his authors, with more than ordinary sympathy
and understanding.” See Downes’s article on Hoppin in Dictionary of
American Biography, s. v. “Hoppin, Augustus.”
23. ABC Book I. [United States?: s.n., ca. 1850–1870?]
24. Ibid., leaf 4.
Gilbert L. Gignac
William Hind Prints of the Labrador Peninsula
Artistic representation and the visual record are closely linked with
the social perception of the environment.
The ability to look upon refined satellite imaging of our
planet and our cosmos is now familiar to us. Wonderment
at the views of distant nebulae, or the rings of Jupiter, or the
red surface of Mars excites many of us. Upon returning to
Earth on May 14, 2013, after spending five months on the
International Space Station, Canadian astronaut
Commander Chris Hadfield commented about the thousands of digital images of Canada that he had regularly
captured and transmitted to us: “…I could just look out the
window…I could see the whole world 16 times a day…I
had time to really savor the entire history, geology, and
geography of our country, over and over again…It’s a view
I did my best to transmit to all Canadians and helped them
see our country….”1 His unassuming statement belies the
colossal effort deployed to make possible such privileged
personal imaging. First become an astronaut, second get to
the ISS, third don’t forget your camera; his stunning photographs amaze and engage us. They also let us imagine the
excitement our ancestors might have felt when they first
viewed new maps, sketches, drawings, prints, and photographs of still unrecorded regions of our planet, provided
for us by explorers since the fifteenth century.
Such an example can be seen in the prints after sketches
by William Hind (1833–1889) in a book published in 1863
by his brother Henry Youle Hind (1823–1908), when the
world was able to look at the first views of the interior of
Canada’s Labrador Peninsula.2 The study of these prints led
to the recovery of the long-missing correspondence that
documents the exploring expedition that generated them,
and to the discovery of the little-known Longman publisher’s records, which reveal how William Hind’s watercolors
were perpetuated as prints and disseminated around the
world. Together with other recent findings, they provide a
rare, complete picture of the creation of the illustrations for
a mid-nineteenth-century Canadian book, from field study
to published print. This compilation of new evidence also
reveals some of the more elusive dynamics of late-nineteenth-century artist/illustrator practices, and of the reciprocal processes practiced in the illustrated press in North
American and British visual culture of the time.
After Henry Youle Hind had explored the Canadian
North-West in 1857 and 1858 for the government of the
early Province of Canada, he displayed his Report,3 and all
of the visual documentation that he had amassed, in the
Union Exhibition at Toronto in September, 1859. Just a
few weeks later, the whole was again presented in the annual
Provincial Agricultural Exhibition at Kingston, Ontario.
The installation was described in the Montreal Gazette,
October 3, 1859:
g i l b e rt l . g ig n ac was born in 1944 at Penetanguishene, Ontario.
During the summers of 1966 through 1968 he attended the Banff School
of Fine Arts in Banff, Alberta. He earned a BFA in 1972 from The School
of the Art Institute of Chicago, with a year of study at Hunter College,
City University of New York, and the Brooklyn Museum School. He
received an MA in Canadian Art History from Concordia University,
Montreal, in 1992. Gignac was Collections Manager of Art Collections,
Library and Archives Canada, from 1974–2004. Publications include
Hindsight: William Hind in the Canadian West, with Mary Jo Hughes,
Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2002, and Defiant Beauty: William Hind in the
Labrador Peninsula, The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, St John’s, NL,
2007. He is presently researching the uses of the camera lucida in nineteenth-century Canadian art, and the Canadian prints and drawings of
Peter Rindisbacher.
Turning round…one directly faced a collection
of the maps, sections, plans, watercolor drawings and photographs, accompanying a
‘Report’ on the Assiniboine and Saskatchewan
Exploring Expedition under the charge of Mr.
Henry Youle Hind, MA, Toronto…. These
were, to many, the most novel and striking feature of the exhibition, and one was tempted to
linger upon them, to get as near a view and as
correct an appreciation as possible of the great
and so much talked about North-West
Territory…. I hope to see all these views published. They would make a valuable addition to
the valuable Report of the expedition….
—Dr. Shauna McCabe, Defiant Beauty
From West to East
32
gignac
These candid observations reveal an established, interactive
theatre of communications in mid-nineteenth-century
Canadian visual culture.4 They identify the players5 and the
circumstances and list the multiplicity of visual media used
to negotiate new information between artists and the public imagination. They affirm the pivotal and enduring role
that the published print played in conveying new information about British North America, and in reshaping national self-perception and aspirations, which were asserted to
the world.
The various visual media that were displayed together
created an exciting rapprochement of a distant reality. They
also re-enacted the exploring expedition for the twenty-five
thousand visitors reported to have viewed and “lingered
upon” the installations.6 The published prints designed after
these watercolor and photographic views would continue to
impart complex information about a little-known region of
the country, but in a more immediate and intimate experience, as a book, for readers everywhere. Thus, Henry and
William Hind and their collaborators, had created a virtual
North-West for Eastern Canadian eyes, while their highly
successful publication provides ready access to their work
even today.
Precise geographical, geological, and demographic information was urgently required both by the Province of
Canada and by the British government, in order to make
strategic political and economic decisions, and to eventually
federate British North American colonies and future territories into the soon to be Dominion of Canada.7 Such
reconnaissance and their assessment impacted on national
expansion, communications, immigration, economic investment, and on the exploitation of abundant natural
resources. Henry Hind’s official Report was published by
both governments and tabled in their respective legislatures
in 1859. The following year, Henry privately published an
illustrated, narrative version of his explorations,8 through
the London publishing house of Longman.9 It was as a scientist, educator, and astute political observer that Henry
appreciated the social impact that the broader dissemination of new information about the North-West would have.
The successful reception of his book10 fired his ambition to
pursue other exploration expeditions, and to produce similar illustrated publications, in collaboration with his
younger brother, the artist William Hind.
William George Richardson Hind was born on June 12,
1833, in Nottingham, England, and completed his artistic
education at the new Nottingham Government School of
Design from 1847 to 1851, under the tutelage of designer,
printmaker, and painter James Astbury Hammersley
(1815–1869). In 1851, at age eighteen, William immigrated to Toronto, Canada, to join his older brother, Professor
Henry Youle Hind, who had arrived there in 1846. Henry,
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33
Labrador Sea
Labrador
and
Newfoundland
Hudson Bay
Labrador Peninsula
Moisie River >
Quebec
Ontario
New
Brunswick
Quebec
Montreal
•
PEI
Nova
Scotia
•
Ottawa
Atlantic Ocean
0
Miles
500
f ig . 1 . General diagram of the Labrador Peninsula and Moisie River.
who was educated at the University of Cambridge and in
Europe, was then teaching science at the new Normal and
Model Schools of Upper-Canada (Ontario), where
William was also employed to teach drawing until 1857. In
1853, Henry left the Normal School to teach chemistry and
geology at Trinity College in Toronto.
Although the brothers were quite dissimilar, they did
share a common interest in teaching and in the pedagogical
uses of drawing and painting.11 Henry had even published
a proposal to establish a School of Design in Toronto, similar to those in Britain, but which was never realized.12 They
did not limit their professional teaching to the classroom
and studio, but extended it to their community and the
world at large. This was achieved by communicating
through public lectures and exhibitions, and by harnessing
the power of the pictorial and daily press. Sponsored by the
Arctic explorer and artist Admiral Sir George Back
(1796–1877), Henry was elected a member of the Royal
Geographical Society in London in 1859, which facilitated
collegial access to prominent men with similar interests.
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Significantly, Henry kept a copy of Julian R. Jackson’s influential book, What to Observe,13 in his personal library. Both
brothers, one a scientist and one an artist, had trained to
become observers of the first order. During the next two
decades, their professional work and ambitions for adventurous explorations became more intertwined.
In 1861, on his own initiative, Henry undertook an
exploration of the interior of the Labrador Peninsula (fig.1),
a still little-known region in eastern Canada.14 In his letter
to the Government he clearly stated his intention, “to have
published on my own responsibility by Messrs Longman &
Co. of London, an illustrated descriptive Narrative of the
Expedition. The work to be issued next year in a style similar to my Narrative of the Canadian Expedition in Rupert’s
Land….” He also openly stated his motives for publishing,
and even identified his primary audience/readership: “to call
the attention of the people of the United Kingdom to the
resources of a part of Canada little known, and yet undoubtedly possessing fisheries of extraordinary value on the
coasts, and in the interior forest and mineral wealth which
will attract emigration and capital to a considerable part of
the area still exclusively occupied by nomadic tribes of
Indians.”15
Coincidentally, Henry’s statements also provide rare
insight into the trajectory of William’s artistic intent and
motivations, his choice of subject matter and style, including the viewing public that he too would address.
Sketching Nitassinan
The vast interior of the Labrador Peninsula, which the Innu
called Nitassinan,16 was notoriously difficult of access.
Previous explorations and artistic depictions had confined
themselves only to its coasts. During and after the Seven
Years War (1756–1763), British military surveyor/artists,
such as Col. Joseph Frederick Wallet DesBarres
(1721–1824) and Capt. Henry Wolsley Bayfield
(1795–1885), continued to survey and depict its coastline.17
In 1833, Bayfield had actually encountered the American
artist John James Audubon (1785–1851), who was then
sketching birds along the North Shore of the Gulf of St.
Lawrence.18 In 1860, another American artist, Frederick
Edwin Church (1826–1900), sailed along the Peninsula’s
Atlantic Coast, taking preparatory sketches for his monumental paintings of icebergs and for magazine illustrations.19 That same year, Canadian geologist James
Richardson (1810–1883)20 was the first to use photography
in Canada to record geological features along the North
Shore for the Geological Survey of Canada. But in the
summer of 1861, William Hind would become the first
artist to explore and depict the still little-known interior of
the Peninsula, when he joined his brother Henry’s exploring enterprise to ascend the Moisie River, the longest river
in Quebec.
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While preparing for this new expedition, Henry came to
realize that an ascent of the River Moisie, even by seasoned
canoeists under the most favorable of circumstances, would
be physically punishing, technically challenging, and psychologically daunting. He depended solely on a sketchy,
hand-drawn map of the region, but had selected the best
available Native guides who inhabited there. They advised
him to travel light, to better negotiate the river’s numerous
and difficult portages, by supplementing food supplies with
hunting and fishing. He was warned not to set out too early,
due to the narrow window of opportunity for safe river
travel. After an intense Canadian winter, swells of turbulent
waters hurtled down in swift currents through the narrow
river gorges from the Peninsula’s central elevations, which
considerable height was yet still unknown. Without officially sanctioning Henry’s expedition, the Canadian government did provide a small sum for equipment, and granted them free passage on government mail steamers that regularly plied the Gulf coast between Quebec City and New
Brunswick. The government also agreed to appoint two
young professional government surveyors, John Frederick
Gaudet and Edward Cayley, who previously had worked
with Henry in the North-West, so that it could share the
benefits of the valuable scientific maps that they would produce.21 The exploration team packed their three birch-bark
canoes with supplies, along with surveying instruments,
rifles, and fishhooks, and also included axes to clear overgrown portage routes, snowshoes to meet unexpected snowfalls, and fine netting to shield themselves against expected
mosquito swarming (fig. 11).
When invited to join the expedition, William had been
living in Canada for a decade. His previous experience readily informed him that an artist tied to an expedition that
was constantly on the move would require alert sensibilities,
suitable materials, and speed of execution. Furthermore, he
knew that a scientific field exercise deployed to collect precise information called for artistic sensibilities that were also
op p o s i t e , t op t o b o t t om
Figures 2–5, 6-9, and 10–13: Color lithographs by William L. Walton
after watercolors by William G. R. Hind, published in Henry Youle
Hind, Explorations in the Interior of the Labrador Peninsula: The Country
of the Montagnais and Nasquapee. 2 vols. (London: Longman, Green,
Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1863).
f ig . 2 . The Third Rapid on the Moisie. Color lithograph, 43⁄8 x 71⁄4", in
Explorations, vol. 1, frontispiece. Signed, bottom right: “W. L. W.”
f ig . 3 . Second Gorge. Color lithograph, 43⁄8 x 71⁄4", in Explorations, vol.
1, facing p. 104. Signed, bottom right: “W. L. W.”
f ig . 4 . Seal Hunting in the Gulf. Color lithograph, 43⁄8 x 71⁄4", in
Explorations, vol. 2, facing p. 206. Signed, bottom left: “W. L. W.”
gignac
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35
36
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f ig . 5 . To the Burying Ground. Color lithograph, 71⁄4 x 43⁄8", in
Explorations, vol. 2, frontispiece. Signed, bottom left: “W. L. W.”
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responsive to exact observations and that respected truth to
nature—qualities that William had already manifested in
his previous landscapes and portraits. As an artist, he had
adopted a poetic style that prized the immediacy of fact
suitable to reportage and avoided the reverie of picturesque
embellishment.
Just as the appointed surveyors would use various scientific measuring instruments to gather data to plot a map of
the river and its surrounding terrain, so William would
sketch his views with the use of a drawing aid known as a
camera lucida.22 In his book, Henry later described William
sketching under arduous conditions and referred to his
using a drawing “apparatus,” a common term then used to
signify this instrument.23 Furthermore, extensive comparisons with well-known camera-lucida drawings by other
artists confirmed William’s use of this drawing aid.24 This
discovery helps to dispel some of the mystery that had previously surrounded the exactness of his unique style.
On June 4, 1861, the expedition25 set out from Quebec
City, to ascend the Moisie River, near Sept-Isles, Quebec.
This exceptionally strategic river was chosen because it was
used seasonally by the Innu peoples (Montagnais and
Naskapi) of the interior. Its unique and most advantageous
feature was the practicable portage connecting the southflowing Moisie River directly to the great Hamilton River,
now Churchill River, which flowed east to the Atlantic
Ocean. Henry intended to further investigate its untapped
potential as a viable communications route for the
exploitation of inland natural resources, coastal fisheries,
and communications. The Labrador coast had recently
been identified by Col. Taliaferro P. Shaffner (1811–1881)
as a possible North American landing point for his proposed trans-Atlantic telegraph cable,26 the development of
which would be cut short by the onset of the Civil War in
the United States.
The Hind brothers completed their expedition swiftly, in
two months. The party departed from Quebec City on June
4, and started the ascent of the Moisie River on June 10.
Long portages around waterfalls and treacherous rapids
(figs. 2 and 6), steep cliffs and deep gorges (fig. 3), along
with hordes of mosquitoes (fig. 11), and a constant flow of
raging high water (fig. 10), made progress grueling.
However, after reaching the height of land, or watershed
(fig. 7), on June 26, they soon realized that low water levels
and diminishing supplies prevented them from safely taking the critical portage connecting to the Hamilton River
and the Atlantic Ocean. They began their descent on July
2, and after their return the team was disbanded. On July
17, after spending a week at Sept-Iles, Henry and William
sailed further east along the North Shore to Mingan, opposite Anticosti Island (figs. 4, 5, 8, 12). After studying that
gignac
region for three weeks, they boarded the steamer Napoleon
III on August 6, and arrived back in Toronto on August 10,
to begin preparing the publication of their findings.
A View to Publication
Henry Hind had devised his book in two volumes. The first
volume interweaves two themes: first, the narration of the
expedition’s progress, and second, observations of Innu life,
past and present. The second volume is a compilation of
statistics, historical references, and environmental analysis,
followed with an assessment of the state of the fisheries and
recommendations for their more profitable development.
William’s field studies, finished watercolors, and subsequent
prints perfectly reflect the dual themes of the first volume:
half of his images describe the topography and circumstances of the ascent and descent of the Moisie, while the
other half depict Innu customs (figs. 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, 13). To
help readers more readily situate themselves, Henry’s book
included the first detailed map of the Moise River. The
brothers sought to further personalize their account by
including portraits of individual Innu people, such as that of
Dominique, Chief of the Montagnais, and of two individual Naskapi—Otelne and Arkaskhe (fig. 13). Although
Henry viewed North American native peoples through the
prejudices of his age, he came to respect the Innu and strove
to understand their culture, while regretting the destructive
influence that European contact brought on them. Yet, he
determined that all of his newly acquired knowledge of the
region would ultimately be tested against their wisdom and
life experience in this region.
William had sketched throughout the expedition’s journey. A comparative look at one sequence of four closely
related works readily demonstrates the various stages of
William’s artistic practice. The first is a camera-lucida pencil sketch of Third Lake taken in the field on June 24, which
later in Toronto was transformed into a highly-finished
watercolor Steep Rocks, which he then used as the background motif in another watercolor entitled The Conjuror in
his Vapour Bath (a scene he did not witness but reconstructed), which was then selected to be engraved on wood and
printed as a black-and-white wood engraving as published
on page 14, in Explorations II. This is but one example of
many sequences of related images that can be reconstituted
from the numerous works that William Hind left us, that
show us how he negotiated his field sketches into print and
finally within the reach of his readers.27
Today what remains of the hundreds of works that he
made, consists of thirty-four camera-lucida pencil sketches,
one hundred and fifty-two watercolors, and five small oil
paintings. Most are preserved in fifteen public collections
across Canada, while a few remain in private hands. A
selection of one hundred and twenty of William’s sketches
•
william hind prints
37
was pasted into an album and keyed into Henry’s manuscript, and the whole was presented to Longmans for editing with a view for publication. While previous artists had
depicted only fragments of the Peninsula’s environment at
the periphery of its vast interior, William provided Henry
with an array of more complex and all-encompassing views
that interrelated topography, geology, botany, zoology, and
ethnography of the interior of the Peninsula, including portraiture. His sketches and watercolors, along with the wellinscribed maps and section plan, vividly describe the character of the terrain and the daily progress of the expedition.
The height of land which they ultimately scaled left them
worn out and fatigued, but also provided them with spectacular vistas that left them speechless (fig. 7).
William Hind knew that his images needed to be rigorously constructed to stand alongside the precisely surveyed
maps, which together would transmit ideas of the Labrador
Peninsula’s environment to readers. We know that he was
mindful of the transformation his work would undergo in
publication, not only because of his education in design and
his awareness of the sophisticated culture of the British
illustrated press at the time, but also from his choice of
design formats, which are evident in his preparatory sketches, some of which were respected in the resulting prints (fig.
9). William Hind was not a printmaker. No document has
yet been found that reveals the extent of his knowledge of
printmaking, either during his formative years in
Nottingham or while teaching in Toronto. Yet, specific circumstances of printmaking in the visual culture of his day
provide glimpses of how he may have intersected with the
illustrated press and printmaking media.
Scholars ascribe the flowering of the illustrated press in
nineteenth-century Britain to several seminal coincidental
developments. Thomas Bewick (1753–1828) had mastered
and successfully revived the art of wood engraving late in
the eighteenth century. The technical compatibility in
printing relief wood engraving with relief type sparked an
unprecedented increase in illustrated book publishing, particularly travel literature, at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
In addition, steam and rotary presses were developed at the
same time as cheaply produced paper became available and
mechanical typesetting was devised.
By 1842, when the Illustrated London News was founded,
many weekly newspapers and periodicals were illustrated
with dozens of wood engravings. By 1850, wood engraving
had conquered public taste and had become a dominant
visual medium; but its widespread use was equaled and
eventually surpassed by the new, concurrently developed,
printmaking technique of lithography.28 Alois Senefelder
(1771–1834) had invented lithography at the end of the
eighteenth century and published his method of drawing
and printing on stone in 1818. By the middle of the nine-
38
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f ig . 6 , t op. Resting on the Portage Path. Color lithograph, 43⁄8 x 71⁄4",
in Explorations, vol. 1, facing p. 43.
f ig . 7, b o t t om . View from the Ojiapisitagan or Top of the Ridge Portage
at the Summit. Color lithograph, 43⁄8 x 71⁄4", in Explorations, vol. 1, facing
p. 147.
teenth century, lithography’s role in producing inexpensive
color images was well established. Yet, in spite of these
advantages, lithographs, as well as engravings and etchings,
needed to be printed separately from the text of a book, and
later inserted when the book was bound. Only relief wood
engraving could be integrated with relief type.
The combination of black-on-white wood engravings,
color lithographs, and etched maps became a standard feature of illustrated books of travel and exploration during the
second half of the nineteenth century; it was a recipe that
lent itself effectively to Henry Hind’s Explorations. He had
already enjoyed what the illustrated press could offer an
author/adventurer, after Longman had published his
Narrative in 1860. That Henry resorted to a publisher in
England also reflected the immature state of Canadian
publishing to competitively produce well-illustrated books.
At this time, Canadian publishing suffered unfairly under
the isolating copyright trade agreements between Great
gignac
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william hind prints
39
f ig . 8 , t op. The Winding Sheet. Color lithograph, 43⁄8 x 71⁄4", in
Explorations, vol. 2, facing p. 96.
f ig . 9 , b o t t om . A Visit to Otelne in His Lodge. Color lithograph,
43⁄8 x 71⁄4", in Explorations, vol. 1, facing p. 323.
Britain and the United States.29 The British illustrated press
of that time was a well-oiled machine that commanded a
worldwide readership and was eager to produce works of
every kind, from indigenous authors throughout the British
Empire and from the United States.30
James A. Hammersley, William Hind’s teacher at
Nottingham from 1847 to 1849, was an accomplished lithographic artist who most likely had the greatest direct influence on Hind’s knowledge of printmaking media and the
illustrated press. Through him, William had access to printmaking draftsmanship and design expertise of the highest
order. Furthermore, William could access up-to-date
information about evolving printmaking technology in
books from the school’s lending library.31 The scale of the
preparatory sketches that he submitted, and his use of
design framing devices (fig. 9) reflect his awareness that
these were to function as models for book illustrations,
rather than as works to hang on the line in a gallery; they
40
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f ig . 1 0 , t op. An Escape from the Fourth Rapid. Color lithograph, 43⁄8
x 71⁄4", in Explorations, vol. 1, facing p. 289.
f ig . 1 1 , b o t t om . Mosquito Lake. Color lithograph, 43⁄8 x 71⁄4", in
Explorations, vol. 1, facing p. 187.
testify to his knowledge of the arts of illustration, design,
and printmaking processes.
The House of Longman
William and Henry Hind’s London publisher, the House
of Longman,was founded in 1724.32 Unfortunately, all correspondence between Henry Hind and Longman is lost.
Henry’s personal papers were apparently tossed down a well
soon after his death.33 Most of his business correspondence
with Longman perished in fires that ravaged their offices
next to St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1861, and again in the Blitz
of 1940.34 In spite of these devastations many of Longman’s
heavily-bound business ledgers miraculously survived and
315 volumes are today preserved at the University of
Reading Library Archives.35 These vivid business records
(fig. 15) detail the major steps and costs of Longman’s production of Hind’s Explorations, including rare and unique
information about the production of the illustrations.36
gignac
•
william hind prints
41
f ig . 1 2 , t op. Roman Catholic Procession of Montagnais and Nasquapees
at Mission of Seven Islands. Color lithograph, 43⁄8 x 71⁄4", in Explorations,
vol. 1, facing p. 335.
f ig . 1 3 , b o t t om . Nasquapees. Otelne, The Tongue. Arkaskhe, The
Arrow. Color lithograph, 43⁄8 x 71⁄4", in Explorations, vol. 2, facing p. 96.
By 1860, Longman was publishing approximately 250
works per year.37 To initiate Henry’s project, the publisher
undoubtedly reviewed its components with him, edited
his text and images, determined the number of prints and
maps for inclusion, reviewed time frames for production
and book-launch, and planned advertising and promotion.
Longman contracted out the various aspects of the book’s
production to an available team of experienced London
printers and printmakers. A brief examination of the role
that each played, reveals how they individually and collectively conveyed William’s sketches and Henry’s text to the
viewing and reading public.
We know which images were presented to the publisher,
and which were selected for inclusion and which rejected.
The number of prints to be published was also likely determined by Longman’s cost-management parameters.
Although records no longer exist of how the images to be
lithographed in colors or engraved on wood were chosen,
42
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autumn 2013
f ig . 1 4 . William Hind, Second Gorge, Moisie River, Labrador, ca. 1861.
Watercolor, 71⁄2 x 8 3⁄4". Library and Archives Canada, William G. R.
Hind collection, e007152085.
consistent characteristics found in William’s sketches reveal
his knowledge of book illustration requirements, and indicate that the brothers likely devised a publication scheme in
Toronto, which Henry then presented to Longman. Most
of the watercolor studies for the color lithographs are consistently larger in scale, more ambitious and complex in
iconography, and much more elaborately and subtly finished (fig. 14). Most of the studies for the wood engravings
are consistently smaller in scale and sometimes the same
size as the print. In the wood-engraving trade at the time,
small-scale preparatory sketches were preferred—the
diminutive scale helped the engraver to better translate and
perpetuate the artist’s work.38 No doubt concerns about the
chronology of the action and drama of the narrative, as well
as questions about the novelty, variety, rhythm, and layout of
the illustrations would have been considered by artist,
author, and publisher, according to the restrictions and possibilities of the book’s octavo format.
Longman’s records show that the printing of the text was
contracted to Spottiswoode & Co. on New Street Square.39
Founded in 1739 and flourishing under the directorship of
George Andrew Spottiswoode (1827–1899) in the 1860s,
the company was one of London’s oldest and most distinguished printers and had a long association with
Longman.40 The printing job for an octavo edition of 750
copies, in quires, in two volumes, was a straightforward
gignac
affair, but it nevertheless had to be coordinated with the production and printing of the wood engravings. A compositor
at Spottiswoode would later integrate the relief wood blocks
and letter type for inking and printing together. Additional
costs for creating the table of contents and index, deleting and
making corrections, and cold-pressing are also listed.
None of the wood engravings in Hind’s book are signed.
This is in keeping with an accepted professional principle in
the trade: “The engraver should be known by his work.
There should be no necessity for his name to appear on it.
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william hind prints
43
You should be able to tell it without any signature.”41
Although the role of the wood engraver was to reproduce
the work of the artist without inserting his own personality,
each engraver owned a unique, recognizable, engraving style
of cutting the artist’s design onto wood. Nevertheless, selfpromotion sometimes superseded this noble resolve and
many a block in the illustrated press bears the engraver’s signature or mark.
While the compositors at Spottiswoode were setting
type, the job of engraving twenty-three designs onto wood
f ig . 15 . Page from Longman Impressions Book 14, p. 223, listing production steps and costs for “Hind’s Labrador,” September to December,
1863. University of Reading Special Collections.
44
Imprint
blocks was assigned to George Pearson (active
1850–1910).42 Pearson was one of London’s most notable
and prolific wood engravers. He took in work from various
publishers and also cut blocks for the Illustrated London
News, the Graphic, and Harper’s Magazine.43 No record has
yet come to light that tells exactly how Pearson created his
wood engravings after William Hind’s watercolors.
Fortunately, in the preface of her book published in 1877
and also illustrated with wood engravings by George
Pearson, author Amelia Edwards (1831–1892) incidentally
gives a rare glimpse into Pearson’s studio operations and his
wood-engraving skills:
Mr. G. Pearson…has spared neither time nor
cost in the preparation of the blocks…[which]
conveys no idea of the kind of labor involved.
Where engravings of this kind are executed,
not from drawings made at first-hand upon
the wood, but from watercolour drawings
which have not only to be reduced in size, but
to be, as it were, translated into black and
white, the difficulty of the work is largely
increased. In order to meet this difficulty and
to ensure accuracy, Mr. Pearson has not only
called in the services of accomplished
draughtsmen, but in many instances has even
photographed the subjects direct upon the
wood. Of the engraver’s work—which speaks
for itself—I will only say that I do not know in
what way they could be bettered.44
Records indicate that Pearson had completed the wood
engravings for Explorations by March 13, 1863, at a cost of
£54.6.0.45 They were then delivered to Spottiswoode for
printing within the typeset pages. After a first print run,
the blocks and galleys were retained in case commercial
success required a second edition. After a final edition, it
was common practice to auction off or lease blocks to other
publishers for re-use.
Longman’s records (fig. 15) also show that the production of the color lithographs was contracted to the printmaking firm of M. & N. Hanhart, 64 Charlotte Street,
Fitzroy Square, just north of the British Museum. The
business was launched in 1830 by Michael Hanhart Sr.
(1788–1865) who had just emigrated from Germany and
named his establishment after his two young sons, Michael
and Nicholas. The firm, whose imprint in 1863 was
“Hanhart Chromo Lith.,” employed four draftsmen, twentyfive printers, four laborers, and ten boys.46 Michael Hanhart
Sr. also taught the art of lithography at the Government
School of Design in London.47 Since 1830 Hanhart had
produced many color lithographs of Canadian subjects on
single sheets and as plates in books or as covers for
Canadian sheet music.48
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Hanhart assigned the task of translating William Hind’s
sketches onto stone to the prolific lithographic artist
William L. Walton,49 who discreetly signed four of the
twelve lithographs (figs. 2, 3, 4, 5) in the image area with
his monogram: “W. L. W”. It is most visible at bottom right
of The Third Rapid on the Moisie (fig. 2), which had been
selected as the frontispiece for Explorations I.50 A close
comparison of this distinctive monogram with those found
on many lithographic plates in Walton’s own published
Amateur Drawing Book confirms he is the lithographic artist
who transposed Hind’s watercolors onto stone.51 Prior to
his work with William Hind’s watercolors, Walton was no
stranger to views of Canada. In 1832, he had drawn on
stone several large images of Quebec after sketches by
Robert Auchmuty Sproule (active 1826–1845).52 Later, in
1862, Walton drew another color lithograph of Quebec
City, after a watercolor by Colonel William Denny
(1804–1886), which was also printed by Hanhart as a cover
of Canadian sheet music commemorating the visit of the
Prince of Wales to Canada in 1860.53
A comparison between William Hind’s original watercolors and Walton’s color lithographs reveals that Walton
remained quite faithful to Hind’s watercolors when transposing them onto stone, except in two instances. The watercolor Resting on the Portage Path reveals Hind’s weakness in
rendering the human figure. This was likely due to the lack
of opportunity to practice figure drawing sufficiently during
his formative years in Nottingham. Walton, whose artistic
education we know little about, redrew William’s figures on
stone more ably and competently, revealing his superior
knowledge of perspective and mastery in rendering human
anatomy (fig. 6).
More seriously, in another instance, Walton compromised the integrity of the subject of Hind’s watercolor entitled Second Gorge (fig. 14). The scene depicted is a waterlevel view of a darkly forested, canyon-like, river gorge on
the Moisie River. The tremendous heights prevented the
golden afternoon light from penetrating the gorge, thus
causing a campfire in the shadows at river’s edge to glow
more brightly, in spite of daylight hours. Walton’s obvious
misunderstanding of Hind’s sketch caused him to transform the daytime view into a night scene under a silvery full
moon.54 Walton altered not only the time of day, but also
the astral body represented, as well as the unique interplay
of light (fig. 3). This false re-interpretation likely took place
when the publisher requested Walton to adapt Hind’s more
vertical design to a horizontal one that better suited the
book’s octavo format. While approximating the geographical information in Hind’s sketch, Walton’s adaptation went
too far. His insertion of the “picturesque,” which Hind
keenly avoided, destroyed Hind’s holistic approach in
depicting the environment by showing the true character of
sunlight being perpetually blocked by steep cliffs from pen-
gignac
etrating the cool, dark river gorge. While bemoaning
Walton’s error, we can yet appreciate the unexpected light it
sheds on William Hind’s artistic intentions and philosophical approach in constructing new, truth-filled representations
of the environment. It affirms the experimental nature of his
creative temperament, striving to produce images of nature
without the intrusive deformations of the “picturesque.” It
speaks to the truth of realism he aspired to in his work.
Readers at the time might have assumed that each color
lithograph they were examining was individually printed.
However, Longman’s records reveal a remarkably different
story. They state that the twelve lithographs were printed in
seven colors, (calibrating three primary, three secondary,
and black) which would technically have required the use of
eighty-four stones—keeping in mind that the printing of a
multi-color lithograph required one stone per color.
However, the production records for the plates (fig. 15) also
indicate costs for the proving of only twenty-one stones,
and also for the printing of twelve images on three sheets of
paper, and that 775 sets of images were printed on a total of
2325 sheets of paper. We can only deduce from these production numbers, that the twelve lithographs were printed
in three sets of four images, which technically required only
twenty-one large stones. The three printed sheets with four
images each would then be aligned and trimmed to produce
the twelve prints required.
Another telling detail that confirms that this printmaking method was adopted is the odd fact that only four of
the twelve color lithographs in Explorations I and II are
signed. In the trade, a lithographic artist producing a series
of prints for a commercial printing house was sometimes
allowed to discretely sign one stone in the image, or several
images on one large stone. Many never signed, but others
as enterprising as Walton, left their mark. Longman’s
records55 also indicate additional costs for: “Mounting 2
sets on cardboards with gold lines. £1.” (fig. 15) The addition of the lines was a modest ornamentation for simple,
direct framing. Six of these mounted prints bearing Henry
Hind’s pen and ink inscriptions are today preserved in the
Art Collections of the Library and Archives Canada,
Ottawa. Finally, after an initial print run, the designs on
the stones were sealed in wax and stored, until pulled from
the shelf and re-used to prepare plates for a second edition
of the book.56
To help the reader more accurately situate William’s
scenes and Henry’s narrative, two maps based on the originals drawn up by surveyors Cayley and Gaudet were
included—one of the Labrador Peninsula and the other of
the River Moisie.57 On the map of the Moisie River, a carefully dotted line was also etched and later hand-colored in
red to plot the expedition’s route. Longman had the large
original maps reduced and printed by the renowned
London cartographic publisher Edward Weller (d. 1884) at
•
william hind prints
45
34 Red Lion Square. Weller had been a fellow of the Royal
Geographical Society since 1851, and had prepared all of
the maps published in their Journal between 1857–1872.
He had also created numerous maps for many of
Longman’s publications, including those for Hind’s previous book on the North-West Territory.
After the four components of Henry’s book—text, wood
engravings, color lithographs, and etched maps—were
completed, Spottiswoode produced a “dummy” of the book
for Longman’s approval by May 18, 1863. By September,
both volumes of Explorations were printed in an edition of
750 copies. Production costs totaled £520.14.2 (fig. 15). A
suitable number for initial sale were bound in a green case
binding as a two-volume set, or as one thick volume, by the
London bookbinder, Westley & Co.58 The advertisement
that Longman placed in the London Times on November
7, 1863, stated that the book would be officially launched
on November 12, in time for Christmas sales. Longman’s
records indicate that six copies were sent to Henry Hind in
Toronto on November 7, 1863, and the usual five copies
were forwarded to Stationery Hall for legal deposit on
February 17, 1864.59
We can only speculate that Henry likely sent one of his
copies to his brother William, who by then had walked
across the continent, from Winnipeg to the Pacific coast,
with the “Overlanders of 1862”—sketching all the way—
and eventually settled for almost a decade at Victoria, in the
new British colony of Vancouver Island.60 Unfortunately we
have no record of his personal reaction to the printed book.
William would likely have received it with delight and pride
and perhaps some consternation at the changes Walton had
contrived. We do know that sales were initially brisk.
Several promotional copies had also been sent to various
individuals, including the German geographer Augustus
Petermann (1822–1878), then living in London. Thirty
copies were marked as “Sundries” and distributed for review
in newspapers and periodicals in England and abroad. The
critical review that appeared in the Westminster Review of
January 1864 stated: “The enterprise could not have fallen
into better hands than those of Mr. Hind, already well
known from his account of the Red River Exploration of
1859, and the Assiniboine Expedition of 1858. We do not
remember to have ever read a book of travels which so completely brings the country before the reader’s eyes….”
Longman’s records show that by June, 1864, only half of the
edition of 750 copies had sold—none in the United States
due to the trade embargo imposed by the ongoing Civil
War. By June 1865, sales had slowed to a trickle and 258
unbound quires and 108 cloth copies were then remaindered
and sold through trade sales. As the book commanded no
second printing, Longman duly instructed Hanhart to erase
William’s images from the stones: “Memorandum Plates
ordered to be rubbed off the stones Oct 4/65.”61
46
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Henry’s book Explorations helped him secure further professional work as a geologist in New Brunswick and in
Nova Scotia where he re-settled in 1865. William left
Victoria, British Columbia, in 1869 and again traversed the
entire country to join his brother and continue planning
new publishing projects. There is no doubt that Henry and
William’s previous illustrated publications had left a favorable public impression. In 1872, Montreal publisher John
Lovell (1810–1893) distributed a Prospectus to potential
subscribers, which described the publication of an encyclopedia in five volumes on The Dominion of Canada, to be
authored by Henry Hind. It further stated:
The illustrations will consist of upward to two
hundred and twenty engravings on steel, chromoxylographs [color woodcuts], woodcuts, etc.
etc. and except where otherwise mentioned,
will be from the pencil of Mr. William Hind
who traversed the continent via the
Saskatchewan Valley and the Leather Pass
[through the Rocky Mountains] in 1862. The
London Saturday Review, in a lengthy critique
on Mr. [Henry] Hind’s Explorations in the
Interior of the Labrador Peninsula, says: “…the
picturesqueness is much increased by the obvious accuracy of the illustrations, made by Mr.
William Hind, the draughtsman of the
Expedition.” Jan. 30th, 1864.62
The Dominion of Canada was to be their most ambitious
publication, which would have provided William Hind
with more opportunities to create new work. Unfortunately
the venture was never realized.
In sum, I would propose that significant parts of our early
visual culture can only truly be appreciated through the
careful study of our illustrated press, which constituted the
most extensive gallery of visual art accessible to the greatest
number of people at the time. The illustrated book was an
island of meaning whose power was augmented by allowing
image and text to dance together in the intimacy of its reader’s hands. Even today, the resurgence of the “graphic novel”
speaks to the resilience of the illustrated book form.
Previously, it had been notoriously difficult and often
impossible to know the precise edition number of many
illustrated books published in the nineteenth century. This
kind of information would help qualify their popularity and
quantify their rarity, let alone assess the impact of their significance. The distinguished scholar of Canada’s economic
history Harold A. Innis (1894–1952)63 estimated that
William and Henry Hind’s Explorations was a most reliable
record and an invaluable true “picture” of the state of
Canadian fisheries then. In fact, Henry would later represent Newfoundland at, and edit the proceedings of, the
Halifax Fisheries Commission convened at Halifax, Nova
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autumn 2013
Scotia, in 1877 to investigated fisheries disputes between
Canada and the United States. Although the exact number
of surviving copies of his book remains unknown, we can
now more fully appreciate that such published works are
indeed very rare and offer valuable insight into an important part of our visual culture and into the state of the country at the time. The Longman papers, at the University of
Reading Library Archives in England, remain a rich source
of documentation on numerous illustrated books from
around the world. As more and more individual nineteenth-century illustrated volumes are studied, a broader
picture of their invaluable contribution to our intellectual
and visual culture will be more clearly discerned.
Epilogue
After leaving the Pacific Coast, William Hind continued to
depict the Canadian environment of the Maritimes and of
Southern Quebec. Although he periodically exhibited his
work, none was again published. After a long illness, he died
on November 18, 1889, in Sussex, New Brunswick, at age
fifty-six, and today lies buried next to his brother Henry, in
Maplewood Cemetery, Windsor, Nova Scotia. His black
granite gravestone is fittingly engraved with the words
“CONFEDERATION PAINTER”, for he remains the first
Canadian artist to have painted the whole of Canada, from
sea to sea.
notes
This summary article is based on the author’s lecture delivered at the AHPCS annual meeting in Ottawa in 2006, and
also on his published exhibition catalogue: Defiant Beauty:
William Hind in the Labrador Peninsula, introduction by Dr.
Shauna McCabe (St. John’s, NL: The Rooms Provincial Art
Gallery, 2007). Copies are available only at The Rooms Gift
Shop, tel: 1 + 709-757-8061.
1. Diane Selkirk, “What a Wonderful World,” Globe and Mail (Toronto),
June 29, 2013, Section T: 4, 5.
2. Henry Youle Hind, Explorations in the Interior of the Labrador Peninsula:
The Country of the Montagnais and Naskapee Indians, 2 vols. (London:
Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1863), (hereafter
referred to as: Explorations I or II). A reprint is today available, including
color reproductions of the color lithographs, published by Boulder
Publications, NL, in 2007.
3. Henry Youle Hind, North-West Territory: Report of progress; together
with a preliminary and general report on the Assiniboine and
Saskatchewan exploring expedition, made under instructions from the
Provincial Secretary, Canada (Toronto: John Lovell, 1859). The government of the Province of Canada also published a French edition:
Territoire du Nord-Ouest: rapports de progrès… (Toronto: John Lovell,
1859). It was also published by the British government as: British
North America: Reports of progress… (London: Spottiswoode, 1859),
(hereafter referred to as Report).
gignac
4. Elsbeth Heaman, The Inglorious Arts of Peace: Exhibitions in Canadian
Society During the Nineteenth Century (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1998).
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william hind prints
47
the old Province of Canada relating to matters of the sovereign lands
were separated and transferred to the jurisdiction of the Province of
Ontario and the Province of Quebec respectively.
5. The Report included a list of watercolors painted by William Hind,
after works by expedition draftsman John Arnot Fleming
(1835–1876), and photographer Humphrey Lloyd Hime
(1833–1903).
16. In the Montagnais language Nitassinan means “Our Land.”
6. “The Late Provincial Fair,” Hamilton Weekly Spectator, October 13,
1859. Reports: “With regard to the number of persons present…on
the third day [Sept. 29] the number was very large, probably not under
30,000 in the afternoon; and on Friday the number was also large.”
This suggests an attendance well over 50,000, of which half, or more,
likely viewed Hind’s exhibition.
18. Maria Audubon, Audubon and his Journals (New York: Charles
Scribner & Sons, 1897), vol. 1, 349.
7. Canadian Confederation was achieved peacefully in 1867. Just as the
Government of the Province of Canada employed Henry Y. Hind to
report on the “near” North-West, so the British government commissioned John Palliser (1817–1887) to lead the British North American
Exploring Expedition in the “far” North-West, to map the passes
through the Rocky Mountains. Both official and popular publications
that resulted did much to publicize British North American interests
and hastened the end of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s ownership.
8. Henry Youle Hind, Narrative of the Canadian Red River Exploration of
1857 and of the Assinniboine [sic] and Saskatchewan Exploring
Expedition of 1858. 2 vols. (London: Longman, Green, Longman &
Roberts, 1860). The volumes were illustrated with twenty color woodengravings and seventy black-and-white woodengravings, based on
watercolor sketches by expedition artist John Arnot Fleming
(1835–1876), and photographs by Humphrey Lloyd Hime
(1833–1903), along with ten etched maps and plans, (hereafter
referred to as Narrative).
9. The House of Longman in 1863 was called Longman, Green,
Longman, Roberts & Green. (hereafter referred to as Longman.)
10. Henry published extracts from sixteen favorable reviews of his book
Narrative to validate and promote his work and support his future
endeavors in Narrative of the Canadian Red River Exploration of 1857
and of the Assinniboine [sic] and Saskatchewan Exploring Expedition of
1858: Opinions of the Press. (Toronto: McLear & Co. 1861).
11. William Lewis Morton, Henry Youle Hind 1823–1908 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, c.1980).
12. Journal of Education for Upper Canada. (March 1849): 38-41.
13. Julian R. Jackson, What to Observe: or, The Traveler’s Rememberancer
(London: J. Madden & Co. 1841). This influential publication was
sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society, and is listed as being
from Henry Y. Hind’s library in: Calendar of the Church School for Girls,
1882–1893 (Windsor, Nova Scotia), 33.
14. The northwest half of the Peninsula was then still under charter to the
Hudson’s Bay Company, while today the whole area comprises the sovereign territories of the Province of Quebec and the Province of
Newfoundland and Labrador. As a geological entity, the Labrador
Peninsula lies between the Arctic Circle to the north and the Gulf of St.
Lawrence in the south, Hudson and James Bay to the west and the
Atlantic Ocean in the east. Considered the world’s largest peninsula, its
vast watershed of 4,500 rivers flows from its central height of land into
the sea on all sides, except at its lower southwestern end that connects
it to the mainland. Still difficult of access and considered one of
Canada’s salmon-rich wild rivers, the Moisie flows through the region
of Quebec called the North Shore.
15. Henry Youle Hind to the Surveyor General of Canada, Toronto, 28
March 1861. Dossier d’exploitation: CT-M050-0016 ou (215271)
Ministère des Resources naturelles, Bureau de l’arpenteur général du
Québec, Quebec City. After Confederation in 1867, colonial papers of
17. The St. Lawrence Survey Journals of Captain Henry Wolsley Bayfield,
1829–1853, edited and introduced by Ruth McKenzie (Toronto: The
Champlain Society, 1989).
19. David C. Huntington, The Landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church (New
York: George Braziller, 1966). See also, Rev. Louis Legrand Noble,
After Icebergs with a Painter (New York.: D. Appleton and Co, 1861).
20. David R. Richeson, “James Richardson (1810–1883),” Dictionary of
Canadian Biography (University of Toronto/Université Laval, 1982),
vol. 11.
21. Detailed government instructions to the two surveyors, as well as the
impressive twenty-two foot long map and cross-section plan of the
Moisie River that they produced, are preserved in the Archives du
Ministère des Resources naturelles du Québec, Quebec City.
22. Patented in 1806, the camera lucida’s tiny, smooth, quadrilateral prism,
suspended at the tip of a short, flexible, metal arm, allowed a scene to be
viewed with undistorted clarity. A slight adjustment of the eye allowed
for the simultaneous viewing of the hand holding a pencil while sketching an outline of the scene also reflected onto paper. Thirty-three
untouched camera-lucida pencil sketches taken by William Hind during
the expedition are today preserved in Special Collections in the Baldwin
Room at the Metro Toronto Reference Library, Toronto.
23. George Dollond, The Camera Lucida: An Instrument for Drawing in true
Perspective, and for Copying, Reducing, or Enlarging other drawings, To
Which is Added, by Permission, A letter on the Use of the Camera, by Capt.
Basil Hall, R.N., F.R.S. (London: Gaudier Printers, 1830). Dollond refers
to the camera lucida interchangeably as “apparatus” or “instrument.”
24. William Hind’s pencil sketches were compared to the well known
camera-lucida drawings by Captain Basil Hall (1788–1844), Lt. James
Pattison Cockburn (1779–1847), and Sir George Back (1776–1878).
See also Larry J. Schaaf, Tracings of Light: Sir John Herschel & the
Camera Lucida (San Francisco: The Friends of Photography, 1989).
The present author is also researching the uses of the camera lucida in
nineteenth-century Canadian art.
25. The expedition team consisted of twelve individuals: Henry and
William Hind, along with two government surveyors, Cayley and
Gaudet, left Quebec City together for Sept-Isles, where two Native
guides and five French Canadian voyageurs were engaged. A young
Nasquapee guide joined them along the way.
26. The laying of the first North Atlantic telegraph cable was completed
in August 1858, but failed three weeks later. A second was being proposed by several enterprises.
27. An illustrated comparative study of this sequence of closely related
works was exhibited in 2007 and published in the exhibition catalog.
See Gilbert L. Gignac, Defiant Beauty: William Hind in the Labrador
Peninsula (St. John’s, NL: The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, 2007).
28. Michael Twyman, A Directory of Lithographic Printers 1800–1850
(London: Printing Historical Society, St. Bride’s Institute, 1976).
29. See a discussion of these restrictive publishing tariffs in George L.
Parker, “John Lovell (1810–1893),” Dictionary of Canadian Biography
(University of Toronto/Université Laval, 1990), vol. 12.
30. Notes on Books, being an analysis of the works published during each quarter
by Messrs. Longmans and Co. (London, 1855). The volumes provide a
descriptive list of all Longman titles available for order, which production
records are at University of Reading Library, Special Collections.
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31. Government School of Design, Somerset House, Catalogue of the Lending
Library (London: W. Clowes & Sons, 1848), 51, listed under “Wood
Engraving, Lithography, etc.” Government grants were provided to
branch schools around Britain to establish similar reference libraries.
32. Harold Cox and John Chandler, The House of Longman, with a Record
of their Centenary Celebrations (London: Longmans, Green, 1925).
33. Katherine Aylward to J.V. Duncanson, January 1972. John V.
Duncanson Papers. MG 1, vol. 3336, no. 24. Nova Scotia Archives and
Records Management, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
34. See note 32. See also Asa Briggs, et al., Essays in the History of
Publishing in Celebration of the 250th Anniversary of the House of
Longman, 1724–1974 (London: Longman Group Limited, 1974), 10;
and Briggs, A History of Longmans and Their Books, 1724-1990:
Longevity in Publishing (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2008).
35. University of Reading Library, Special Collections, Records of British
Publishing and Printing: The Longman Group (hereafter referred to
as URLSC). When providing the author’s name and book title, staff easily pulled records from three different types of ledgers that contained
detailed information for both of Henry Hind’s publications, Narrative
and Explorations. The production steps and costs for “Hind’s Labrador”
from September to December, 1863, were listed in Impression Book 14
(fig.15). Another volume, Miscellaneous Publication Expenses Ledger
A3, listed additional production costs from December 31, 1862, to
June 30, 1863. Records from Divide Ledger D7 revealed details about
distribution and sales, with associated costs from March 21, 1863, to
April 1866.
36. Alison Ingram, Index to the Archives of the House of Longman, 1794–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). This index
lists 10 other microfilm series of archives of other important British
publishers. A microfilm copy (73 reels) “The Longman Group
Archives” of University of Reading Special Collections, is located at
Mills Memorial Library, McMaster University. See National Library
of Canada-Amicus No.11133162.
37. See note 32.
38. G. W. Sheldon, “A Symposium of Wood Engravers,” Harper’s New
Monthly Magazine 60 (1880): 442–453. This article is a summary of
conversations with six American wood engravers. Although published
fifteen years later than Explorations, Sheldon’s article reveals that the
craft had not changed much since the 15th century, even after the
invention of photography.
39. Impression Book 14: 223, Longman Group Archives, URLSC. See
imprint in Explorations I: 351, and on verso of front flyleaf, also in
Explorations II: 304, and on verso of front flyleaf.
40. Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh, The Story of a Printing House:
Spottiswoode and Co. (London, 1912).
41. Sheldon, 443-4. The quotation is from American wood engraver A.
V. S. Anthony.
42. Impression Book 14: 223, Longman Group Archives, URLSC. See also
Rodney K. Engen, Dictionary of Victorian Woodengravers (Cambridge:
Chadwick-Healey, 1985), 204.
43. William Andrew Chatto, A Treatise on Wood Engraving (1861; reprint
Bristol: Thoemmes Press & Kinokuniya Co., Ltd., 1998), 573-4.
44. Amelia Edwards, One Thousand Miles up the Nile (London:
Longmans, Green, 1877), introduction.
45. Miscellaneous Publication Expenses, Ledger A3: 203, Longman
Group Archives, URLSC: “1863 March 13 [for] Engraving 23
Woodcuts G. Pearson £54.6.6.”
46. Christine E. Jackson, The Lithographic Printers M. & N. Hanhart
(London: St. Bride’s Printing Library, 1991). Unpublished research,
cited with author’s permission.
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autumn 2013
47. Prospectus, Department of Practical Art, Malborough House, Pall Mall,
London (London: George E. Eyre and William Spottiswoode, 1852),
6, under “Chromolithography.”
48. Montreal Gazette, March 6, 1861, p. 2 and March 7, p. 3.
Advertisements for Fredrick Locke’s Moonlight and Sunlight Views of
the Thousand Islands printed by Hanhart in 1861. Hanhart’s production of Canadian prints merits further study.
49. Little is known about William L. Walton. Other prints from his hand
can be seen in reprints of J. R. Abbey, Travel in Aquatint and
Lithography 1770–1860; and Scenery of Great Britain and Ireland,
1770–1860 (San Francisco: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, 1991).
50. The three other signed prints are, Second Gorge in Explorations I, facing p. 10; To the Burying Ground in Explorations II, frontispiece; and
Seal Hunting in the Gulf in Explorations II, facing p.206.
51. William L Walton, Amateur Drawing Book (London: Longmans,
1844), plates 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8.
52. Library Archives Canada preserves impressions of the four views of
Quebec, drawn on stone by W. L. Walton, printed by Charles
Hullmandel in London, and published in 1832 by Adolphus Bourne
of Montreal.
53. The Royal Voyageurs Quadrilles. Quebec, Augt. 1860, Amicus
no.17159056. Music Collection, Library Archives Canada. Inscribed
at bottom, left margin: “W. Walton litho,” and at bottom right corner
of the image: “W. L. Walton 1862.” See also Michael Bell, Image of
Canada (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1972), cat. nos. 34 and 35.
54. On their first passing through the Second Gorge in early June 1861, the
moon was a new-moon, and upon returning on July 7, the moon was in
its last quarter. See: http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/phase/phasecat.html
55. Impression Book 14: 223, Longman Group Archives, URLSC.
56. Theodore Henry A. Fielding, The Art of Engraving (London:
Ackermann & Co. 1844), 89–90.
57. Explorations I, facing p. 239, Map of the river Moisie and Adjoining
Country. Explorations II, facing p. 125, Map of the Peninsula of
Labrador, Showing the Canoe Route from Seven Islands to Hamilton Inlet,
combined with a Section of the River Moisie.
58. The binding firm of Josiah Westley is identified by a small, diamondshaped, binder’s label: “Bound by / WESTLEY’S / & Co / London”
pasted inside the back cover of Henry Youle Hind’s Explorations I, in
Queen Elizabeth Library, Memorial University, St. John’s, NL, and
also in Provincial Resources Library, Labrador Collection, Call No
917.19/H.58/NR.
59. The five copies were sent to the libraries of the British Museum, and
of Oxford, Cambridge, Trinity, and Edinburgh Universities.
60. Mary Jo Hughes and Gilbert L. Gignac, Hindsight: William Hind in
the Canadian West (Winnipeg: The Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2002).
61. Divide Ledger D7: 123, Longman Group Archives,
Inscription later added to top of page.
URLSC.
62. A copy of the Prospectus is preserved in the William Hind artist file at
the McCord Museum of Canadian History, McGill University,
Montreal.
63. Harold A. Innis, The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International
Economy (Toronto, Ryerson Press, 1940), 358, note 88. Innis also published his 1948 “Oxford Lectures” in Empire and Communications,
with a foreword by Marshall McLuhan (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1972). At University of Toronto, Innis was mentor to
Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980). Their work
has much to say about the power of the illustrated press. They
advanced a theory of history in which communications are central to
social change and transformation.
Book Reviews
Catharina Slautterback. Chromo-Mania!: The Art of
Chromolithography in Boston, 1840-1910. Boston, MA,
The Boston Athenaeum, 2012, 48 pp., 34 color illus.,
ISBN 10:0-934552-81-9, ISBN 13:978-0934552-81-3
(soft cover), $15.00 plus $4.00 for shipping.
Creating a cogent synthesis about a big topic is more difficult than one might think. Chromo-Mania! presents both
description and analysis of an enormous field of print
study, where “chromo” referred to printed matter in multiple colors during the era of the art’s greatest technical and
aesthetic achievement. In only forty-eight pages, this
delightful monograph distills its rich material into a treat
for the eye and an effective, informative summary of
Boston chromolithography.
Beautifully designed by Howard Gralla and printed by
GHP in Connecticut, the thirty-four images—details and
reproductions of “chromos”—are selected from prints in
the Boston Athenaeum collection to illustrate forms, publishers, and diverse subjects from the seven-decade period
of 1840 to 1910. From September 2012 through January
2013, eighty-three examples were exhibited in the
Athenaeum’s building in a show titled eponymously with
this publication. Thus this serves as a catalogue of the exhibition as well as a reference; the check-list of exhibited
works can be accessed on-line [http://www.bostonathenaeum.org/node/1506] and people hungry to see more
of the eighty-three images can view them on the
Athenaeum’s exhibitions (past) web site.
Catharina Slautterback, curator of prints and photographs at the Athenaeum, is well versed not only in her
institution’s material, but as well with the literature of the
broader field of American chromolithography. She steps
forward in her pithy “Glossary of Terms” to offer her take
on a little tempest-in-a-teapot among our scholars today:
What exactly does the term “chromolithograph” mean?
Slautterback concludes it properly means any lithograph
printed with three or more printed hues, besides black, in
essence what today is often called “full color,” and points
out that “chromolithograph” or “chromo” meant simply
that to both the makers and the public. Before the advent
of modern “process” color, these full-color lithographs were
achieved with as few as four, and as many as forty or more,
separate layers of hue.
The apotheosis of American multiple-hue chromolithography is generally considered an exquisite 1897 volume
of large-format plates printed in Boston by Louis Prang &
Co., Oriental Ceramic Art: Illustrated by Examples from the
Collection of W. T. Walters. As well-reproduced as the
(reduced-size) image in this catalogue is, modern process
color simply cannot do justice to these magnificent prints
of Chinese vases, artworks by remarkable lithographic art
crafters called “chromistes” who could analyze the colors of
the original and then recreate the colors in combinations
for accurate translation in the chromolithograph. Still, the
images in Chromo-Mania! are uniformly excellent, wellchosen for their vividness and diversity. They serve to survey cogently the principal uses of chromolithography during the period: advertisements and trade cards, fine art
reproductions, book illustration, greeting cards, town
views, covers for sheet music, natural history, maps, locomotive builders’ prints, and two additional kinds of prints
dear to many members of AHPCS. One kind is prints of historical and current events intended for wall display. Boston
chromos of this category are not so well-known as, say,
Currier & Ives, but certainly as beautiful and interesting,
and worthy of collecting and study. Slautterback categorizes another kind as “Social Issues, Social Clubs, and
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Imprint
Certificates,” and offers her intriguing perspective that
essentially these are all propaganda. Often dismissed by
collectors as so-much dreck, perhaps the author’s idea will
ignite greater interest in such prints, and provoke more
serious scholarly study of their iconography—as we have
long seen done with political cartoons, another important
type of print propaganda.
Slautterback’s notes, found at publication’s end, serve
for a bibliography, and invite the reader into the best literature about American chromolithography. Some of her
notes are thought-provoking, even startling. For example,
note 22 treats photography: the famed chromolithographer Prang referred to it as the “twin-sister” of chromolithography, and the editor of a nineteenth-century photography journal “ask[ed] no apology” for publishing an article
on chromolithography since “photography and lithography
travel so often hand in hand.” Chromo-Mania!’s glossary
•
autumn 2013
includes a welcome concise explanation of “photolithograph,” the broad term for various nineteenth-century
printing techniques that combine photographic and lithographic processes.
While this booklet has no index, those who acquire it
for reference will find re-skimming through the central
essay or the “Variety and Uses” material not terribly onerous. All the important Boston lithographic publishers are
discussed. Besides recitation of fact, Slautterback offers
many clear and useful perspectives about how chromo
prints related to the audience public and to cultural phenomena of the times. These interpretations make the publication well worth acquiring by experts well-acquainted
with North American lithography, as well as by anyone
who simply enjoys learning more about historical prints.
michael j. mccue,
Asheville, North Carolina
The Philadelphia Print Shop
Antique Prints and Maps and Related Rare Books
201 Fillmore Street, Suite 101
Denver, Colorado 80206
303.322.4757
West & East
8441 Germantown Avenue
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19118
215.242.4750
www.philaprintshop.com
Imprint
•
book reviews
51
Donald C. O’Brien. The Engraving Trade in Early
Cincinnati, With a Brief Account of the Beginning of the
Lithographic Trade. Athens, Ohio University Press,
2013, 200 pp., 132 illus. (mostly color), ISBN
9780821426140 (hardcover), $39.95.
Mr. O’Brien quickly comes across as an astute historian
with an eye for ascertaining and an ability for explaining
not only the origins of the engraving trade in Cincinnati,
but the series of events that inspired the trade. Cincinnati,
not unlike St. Louis and other early river towns, offered the
tools and supplies that settlers sought as they either began
or continued their journeys west. These some-time farmers
or tradesmen made up the early-nineteenth-century wave
of settlers that moved on to farms or set up shop as skilled
craftsmen in the lands beyond the Ohio River.
At the end of the eighteenth and going into the nineteenth century, Cincinnati had provided a successful way
station between Pittsburgh and New Orleans with its port
conveniently expanding in size on the banks of the Ohio
River. For those migrating west and south, “transportation
… presented a major hindrance, for it meant journeying by
wagon or horseback through Pennsylvania and then crossing the Allegheny Mountains before reaching their final
destination—the mighty Ohio River” (p. 3).
By 1793, there were four keelboats that made the journey from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati. By 1803, there was a
barge service that operated between Pittsburgh and New
Orleans. “By 1807, almost two thousand keelboats, barges,
and flatboats were arriving in New Orleans annually, and
in that year alone they carried cargoes valued at more than
five million dollars” (p. 3).
As an integral part of “Westward Expansion,” development of a communications network became essential to
Cincinnati, and the emergence of a printing trade became
a logical step in that direction: “The printing trade originated when William Maxwell…brought a press and type
across the Alleghenies and became the first printer and
publisher in Cincinnati” (p. 4).
Printed images, such as illustrations in newspapers,
almanacs, and city directories provided a vital link in nineteenth-century America to reporting information that could
be easily absorbed by interested citizens. Presses arrived from
the East, but there was a lack of quality paper. Browne’s
Cincinnati Almanac for 1810 put it this way: “How strange to
say, that though there are not less than ten or twelve presses
in the state of Ohio, yet the only paper mill in the state is situated within one mile of its eastern border” (p. 5).
There was obviously a critical demand for paper and
paper mills began to appear. The Union Paper Mill came
on stream in 1811 and steadily grew to a point where production barely exceeded demand. Availability of paper was
followed by more publications, thereby creating more outlets for illustrations. By the mid-nineteenth century, illustrations were a vastly increasing mode of public information, and Cincinnati was well on its way to providing multiple sources for the paper market, and had become a net
exporter of paper.
At the same time, Cincinnati had expanded its field of
expertise in engraving beyond the newspaper industry. Mr.
O’Brien’s chapter on “The Development of Banknote
Engraving” clearly illustrates the advancement of engraving skills that grew as the Ohio population expanded and
the number of banks increased in a few short years from
eleven to thirty-three. It was a remarkable increase indeed,
considering that although Cincinnati was growing its population was fluid, with vast numbers moving westward,
always west. As demand for banknotes increased exponen-
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tially during and after the 1830s, the number of engravers
who arrived in Cincinnati increased. Mergers among banknote engravers appear to have been prevalent, as some
names show up in different places. For example, “the
imprint ‘Woodruff & Hammond’ appeared solely on
denominations for the Ohio & Cincinnati Loan
Office…‘Woodruff, Tucker & Co.’ appeared solely on
notes for a Kentucky bank” (p. 54). Mr. O’Brien further
notes: “It appeared at this point that only Woodruff and
Tucker were actively engraving notes in Cincinnati and
that Doolittle & Munson [another engraving company]
were merely acting as agents. To confuse the issue, an
advertisement appeared in Cincinnati in 1842 revealing
another interesting partnership: Durand, Hammond &
Mason” (p. 55).
That Cincinnati sponsored a number of banknote
engravers is obvious and the expansion could be seen to
simply track the westward expansion and population
explosion west of the Alleghenies. Apparently some of
these merged banknote companies were not easily traceable; perhaps they were a fallout of mergers that occurred
in the midst of a business boom that was too hard to trace.
Mr. O’Brien’s chapter on banknotes clearly leaves the reader with the impression that rapid economic growth seeks
capital; capital must find its way into a business climate
that requires adequate resources; banks are an essential
ingredient in any period of prolonged growth and banknotes provided the conduit through which a new economy
could flow. Without this form of paper credit, capital
movement would slow, wither, or slowly die. Over a fortyyear span, the skilled engravers and their companies furnished the paper credit certificates that pushed trade and
commerce forward. And then, by the early 1870s, a large
percentage of these skilled engraving houses moved back
east to New York. Perhaps this move presaged the time
when all of the young nation’s financial outposts gravitated
from Main Street to Wall Street. Mr. O’Brien’s deft display
of the engravers’ tale in Cincinnati surely gives rise to this
speculation.
From the Western Methodist Book Concern, that had
its earliest roots in 1820, came The Ladies’ Repository, first
published in 1841 and continued until 1876. “Its objective
was to offer its membership a monthly periodical devoted
to ‘literature, art and religion’” (p. 68). The chapter on this
Methodist journal contains some of the richest engravings
in Mr. O’Brien’s extensive work, many of which I could
cite. But a favorite is Eva Pointing Out the Happy Land (p.
93), painted by A. Hunt and engraved by F. E. Jones. It
tenderly expresses the aspirations and visions of Eva, in a
touching moment of both hope and desperation in Harriet
Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Its poignancy is furthered enriched when one remembers that Cincinnati was
•
autumn 2013
one of the main centers of the Underground Railroad in
antebellum America that assisted many runaway slaves on
their journeys to Canada and freedom.
Two of the steel engravings in this chapter worth mentioning are expressions of explorers’ contacts with Indians,
sometimes rewarding, oftentimes treacherous as shown by
Capture of the Daughters of Dan Boone (p. 104). Chimney
Rock, Ogalillah [sic] (p. 134) depicts an Indian settlement
on the road west, symbolic perhaps of the injustices
brought on American Indians by the relentless movement
west. Chimney Rock was possibly a peaceful settlement;
regardless, at some point in time, it was probably an obstacle to the migrating settlers. American Indians, taken in
whatever context, provided a vital link in the chain of
events that led up to westward movement, sea to sea.
The printing industry made slow but remarkable
growth in Cincinnati during the first sixty years of the
nineteenth century. Commerce and trade grew as the riverboat traffic exponentially increased during the first quarter
of the century. Copperplate engravings were the engine of
the printing industry during these formative early years;
the lead engraving house was Doolittle & Munson. The
firm trained its own apprentices, many of whom became
skilled engravers, but few entered the banknote business,
which was probably the most highly skilled and demanding part of the copperplate business. Most of the banknote
engraving industry migrated back to New York by 1873,
but this did not seriously set back Cincinnati’s role in
becoming the major source of engravings. The industry in
Cincinnati was sufficiently diversified to incorporate other
avenues of business to uphold the standards of the trade
and the volume required to keep the city at the forefront of
engraved printmaking in the nineteenth century. “While
steel and copperplate engraving began declining in importance during the 1850s, relief cuts were still being produced
and printed in large quantities for newspapers and journals
as well as books” (p. 175).
The last chapter of Mr. O’Brien’s extensive work deals
with the opening of the lithographic trade in Cincinnati, a
worthy successor to the outstanding era of engraving. This
study offers an insight into the American way of moving
forward; industry of all kinds in the United States has
always found ways to reinvent itself. Mr. O’Brien’s work
clearly demonstrates the way in which the growth of
industry in America, in this case engraving in Cincinnati,
can be researched, written, and illustrated in a manner that
holds something of interest for those who study it. His
book provides an outstanding resource.
james schiele,
St. Louis, Missouri
Imprint
•
book reviews
53
[ Joseph J. Felcone]. Portrait of Place: Paintings,
Drawings, and Prints of New Jersey, 1761–1898, from the
Collection of Joseph J. Felcone, with an introduction by
Elizabeth G. Allan, Princeton, NJ, Morven Museum &
Garden, 2012, 75 pp., 119 illus., some col., ISBN: 9780-615-66646-4 (soft cover), $18.00.
For many modern Americans, the name New Jersey is virtually synonymous with the New Jersey Turnpike, and conjures
up an image of a vast industrial wasteland, a place to be driven through as quickly as possible on the way to somewhere
else. This is unfortunate because, as Portrait of Place:
Paintings, Drawings, and Prints of New Jersey, 1761–1898,
from the Collection of Joseph J. Felcone makes abundantly clear,
New Jersey is a state with remarkable natural beauty, a fascinating history, and a strong artistic tradition.
For early artists, Passaic Falls, in what is now downtown
Paterson, New Jersey, was an attraction second only to
Niagara. This dramatic waterfall was depicted in a 1761
engraving by British artist Paul Sandby after a drawing by
Thomas Pownall, lieutenant governor of New Jersey and
later governor of Massachusetts. A second state of this print
gained wide distribution in 1768, when it was included in
Scenographica Americana, establishing the falls as a must-see
destination for travelers. Fifty years later in 1819, Passaic
Falls again figured prominently in Joshua Shaw’s
Picturesque Views of American Scenery, published in
Philadelphia in that year. John Hill, the first of his productive family of artists to settle in America, made the beautiful hand-colored aquatint after Shaw’s original drawing.
The beauties of the Passaic River also figured in the lithographs after compositions by the French traveler, Jacques
Gerard Milbert, published in 1828–1829. The spectacular
scenery of the Delaware Water Gap in northwest New
Jersey attracted other artists, including Thomas Birch,
whose View of the Water Gap and Columbia Glass Works (ca.
1815) was engraved by William Strickland, who is better
known for his later work as an architect. Later in the nineteenth century, the Jersey shore developed as an important
summer resort. Views in the Felcone collection include
some remarkable early paintings of Cape May Point and
Atlantic City and other beaches and towns along the coast.
The Felcone collection is particularly rich in prints of
historical subjects, especially those highlighting the important role that New Jersey played during the American
Revolution. A large number of prints by Nathaniel Currier,
Currier & Ives, Thomas Kelly, and Humphrey Phelps
depict Washington crossing the Delaware River the night
of December 25, 1776, on his was to surprise the British at
Trenton, New Jersey. American victories at Trenton and
Princeton were early turning points of the war, and
Washington’s crossing of the Delaware achieved iconic status during the nineteenth century, becoming one of the
most pervasive of all Revolutionary War subjects, far outstripping other battle scenes in popularity. Other prints by
Currier & Ives and their competitors show Washington at
the Battle of Princeton, and Molly Pitcher at the Battle of
Monmouth. According to legend, Molly Hays, known as
“Molly Pitcher” because she carried water to the troops,
took over her husband’s cannon after he was killed.
Another popular historical subject, Washington’s reception
by the ladies of Trenton on his way to his inauguration in
New York City as the first President of the new United
States, is represented in several versions, by N. Currier,
Currier & Ives, E. B. & E.C. Kellogg, and James Baillie.
Considering New Jersey’s reputation for industrialization and urban sprawl, the prominence of industry in views
of cities in the state is not surprising. Views of Paterson by
Edwin Whitefield, and by Howard Heston Bailey, brother
of the better-known birds-eye-view artist Oakley Hoopes
54
Imprint
Bailey, trace the industrial growth of a site once known for
its natural beauty. An early 1830s advertisement for the
Speedwell iron works near Morristown, engraved by David
G. Johnson, places the iron works in a landscape setting,
surrounded by hills. Another piece of ephemera, an 1856
advertisement for Washington Mills near Gloucester, New
Jersey, lithographed by P. S. Duval, shows the factories with
their smoking chimneys on the far side a harbor, with picturesque sailing ships in the foreground. The Felcone collection also features several pictorial lettersheets, including
two with views of Newark and Egg Harbor City, published
by Charles Magnus in the 1850s and 1860s. An 1898 view
of Watchung Heights in West Orange promotes a massive
real estate development and reflects the evolution of many
northern New Jersey towns into bedroom suburbs of New
York City.
Such graphic ephemera is often overlooked by collectors, but Felcone appears to have a special interest in it.
Other ephemera includes trade cards with images by
Thomas Worth poking fun at New Jersey fox hunters,
together with Currier & Ives lithographs of the same compositions. A large heliotype after a painting by William
Sullivan Vanderbilt Allen, Essex County Hounds Going to
Cover (1893) takes a serious view of the same subject.
Other sporting subjects include a number of horse racing
prints showing famous races that took place in New Jersey.
One of them, “Dutchman” and Hiram Woodruff, an 1871
Currier & Ives lithograph showing Dutchman trotting
three miles in seven minutes and thirty-five and a half seconds on the Beacon Course in Jersey City, was selected as
one of the original Currier & Ives “Best 50” small folio
prints in 1933.
New Jersey’s long sandy coastline was the site of numerous shipwrecks. In 1846, Nathaniel Currier published Wreck
of the Ship John Minturn (1846) showing the packet boat
breaking up after she ran aground off Mantoloking, and in
1856 both J. L. Magee and Alfred Pharazyn documented
the burning of the steam ferry New Jersey in the Delaware
River opposite Camden. Magee and Pharazyn co-published yet another view of this disaster. A lithograph by
William R. Rease of Cohansey Light House, N.J., During the
Great Storm, Oct. 23rd, 1878 shows wreckage from the ship
Ester in the foreground, while two other vessels in distress
founder near the lighthouse. The coming of the railroad
provided new opportunities for disaster. John Collins, a little-known lithographer from Burlington drew, printed, and
published a print depicting Accident on the Camden and
Amboy Rail Road, near Burlington, N.J., in 1855. This interesting artist is well-represented in the Felcone collection
with many views of buildings in his native town. An 1830s
view of Saint Mary’s Church, after John Rubens Smith,
includes an early depiction of a Camden and Amboy railroad engine and tender.
•
autumn 2013
Felcone also collects portraits of famous people from
New Jersey. In 1825, Eleazer Huntington of Hartford,
Connecticut, published an impressive portrait of Elias
Boudinot, LLD, a prominent New Jersey statesman during
the American Revolution and early Republic. The portrait
was engraved by Asher B. Durand after a painting by
Waldo and Jewett. A more modest portrait of Thomas
Ledyard Cuyler, minister of the Third Presbyterian
Church in Trenton, was lithographed by David Scott
Quintin and P. S. Duval after a daguerreotype. Theodore
Frelinghuysen, Henry Clay’s running mate in the 1844
Presidential election, who was born in Franklin Township
and graduated from the College of New Jersey, the future
Princeton University, is featured in no less than three different lithographs by Nathaniel Currier and E. B. & E.C.
Kellogg. The Kelloggs also produced portraits of Samuel
Louis Southard, who served as secretary of the navy under
James Monroe and John Quincy Adams; and William L.
Dayton, an 1856 vice-presidential candidate—both graduates of the College of New Jersey.
These are just a few highlights among the one hundred
and nineteen prints which were on view at the Morven
Museum in Princeton, New Jersey, from September 28,
2012, to January 13, 2013. Portrait of Place is more than just
an exhibition catalog, however. On a more modest scale,
Joseph J. Felcone attempts to do for the state of New Jersey
what I. N. Phelps Stokes did for Manhattan Island. By
bringing together works in all media by a wide array of
artists, he seeks to create a comprehensive iconography of
the state, and to a large extent, he succeeds. Portrait of Place
is a thoughtful assemblage of interrelated works that
together tell a compelling and convincing story. Since every
painting, drawing, and print in the book is illustrated, it is
possible to compare different versions of a subject side by
side, as well as to see how depictions of a single place, such
as Paterson, changed over time. Though the book includes
little original scholarship on either prints or printmakers,
that was clearly not its intent, and it succeeds brilliantly in
presenting familiar prints and people in a new and thoughtprovoking context. One might wish that some of the illustrations—especially the birds-eye views—had been reproduced at a larger scale, but for the most part these illustrations serve their purpose. The presence of an index makes it
possible to locate works by individual artists, and incidentally helps one appreciate just how many diverse artists are
represented in this relatively small book. It would be a worthy addition to the library of anyone who is interested in
historical prints of America prior to 1900, especially those
interested in the complicated relationships between nineteenth-century artists and printmakers and print publishers.
n a n c y f i n l ay,
Curator of Graphics, Connecticut Historical Society
Hartford, Connecticut
i n c.
fin e pr i n t s , a n t i q u e m a p s
e s t a b l i s h e d
and
art books
1 8 9 8
Peche du la Cachalot. Cachalot Fishery. Aquatint and engraving after Louis Ambroise Garneray, 1835.
We are Interested in Purchasing
Important American Prints
www.oldprintshop.com
Buying, Selling and Building American Art
and Map Collections for 116 years.
kenneth m. newman harry s. newman robert k. newman
150 lexington avenue at 30th street
new york, ny 10016-8108
tel 212.683.3950 fax 212.779.8040 info@oldprintshop.com www.oldprintshop.com
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Call for Entries 2013–2014
The Ewell L. Newman Book Award
T
o recognize and encourage outstanding publications
enhancing appreciation of American prints at least
one hundred years old, the award consists of a framed citation and one thousand dollars.
Small and large works, those of narrow scope and those with
broad general coverage are equally considered. Original
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after they first appear. Once a work has been passed on by the
Jury, it will not be considered again except in a substantially
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American historical prints. They are Thomas Bruhn (chair),
Storrs, Connecticut; Jonathan Flaccus, Putney, Vermont;
Ned McCabe, Peabody, Massachusetts; Sally Pierce,
Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts; and Lauren Hewes,
Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.
The most recent award, presented at the Society’s annual
conference in May 2013, honors Philadelphia on Stone:
Commercial Lithography in Philadelphia, 1828-1878, edited
by Erika Piola. Contributing authors are Jennifer
Ambrose, Donald C. Cresswell, Sara W. Duke,
Christopher W. Lane, Erika Piola, Michael Twyman, Dell
Upton, and Sarah J. Weatherwax. Philadelphia on Stone is
published by the Pennsylvania State University Press in
association with The Library Company of Philadelphia.
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journal of the american historical print collectors society
volume 38, number 2 • autumn 2013