NOW ON VIEW IN SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Details of the Alhambra

In exploring the Arts Collection for our rare book exhibit, curators Heather and Maya came upon the incredibly detailed and stunning lithographs and engravings in Jules Goury and Owen Jones's Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Details of the Alhambra. Through further research, we learned that this 2-volume set, published in London between 1842 and 1845, was one of the first published books to use the technique of chromolithography, a process that later dominated color reproduction for most of the second half of the 19th century. The set is also an important historical record of the Alhambra, created from drawings done at least twenty years before the first detailed photographic records were made. In 1836, while preparing the original drawings, Jules Goury died of cholera in Granada. This left Owen Jones with the complicated task of finding a printer capable of carrying out the work. He finally resolved to set up his own printing press. The experimental color printing process required up to seven pressings and nearly nine years of trial and error before the work was successfully completed. Jones’s flat colors anticipated the work of William Morris, the Pre-Raphaelites, and the Art Nouveau movement.

Due to its monumental size, we couldn't include this bound set in our exhibit, but it's now on view in the Special Collections reading room along with other portfolios of leaves in the exhibit. The exhibit runs through November 29, but the material in the reading room will be available to view through 2023.

Spore print of Amanita Muscarius. Our edible toadstools and mushrooms and how to distinguish them. 1895.

Internet Archive

Feminine Wave, 1845 by Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, 1760--1849)

Samuel Kilbourne (American, 1836–1881)

"The California Salmon" (ca. 1879)

"Leaping Brook Trout" (1874)

"Yellow Perch" (1878)

A Wet Night, Columbus Circle, William A. Fraser, 1897-98

''The Lament for Icarus'' by Herbert James Draper (1898)

Prints

Fireflies in the Early Summer by Watanabe Shoka (19th Century)

THE GILDED AGE costume appreciation: 2.07: "Wonders Never Cease" — Peggy Scott's pink evening gown with butterfly details

Waistcoat

c.1850

National Gallery of Victoria

Luis Ricardo Falero - Witches going to their Sabbath (1878)

1). Garland chrysanthemum and Japanese bantams

2). Peony and silver pheasants

3). Plum blossom and jays

Woodblock prints (1883) from the series 'Bairei kachō gafu' by

Kōno Bairei  (1844–1895). 

Wikimedia.

Brown printed cotton walking dress, ca. 1885, French.

Met Museum.

[Blasted Trees and Flattened Crops, from Thornton's Pastorals of Virgil.] 1821.

Internet Archive

Three Women and Three Wolves by Eugène Grasset (Swiss, 1845--1917)

Samuel Kilbourne (American, 1836–1881)

"Spanish Mackerel" (1878)

"Northern Red Snapper"

"Atlantic Salmon" (1878)

"Arctic Grayling" (1880)

Fireflies by the Kinu River at Tennoji, Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847-1915)