19th century AD

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 2004 by DeCourcy E. McIntosh

(28) Literary World, vol. 3, no. 45 (December 9, 1848), p. 901.

(29) Between 1844 and 1877 Eugene Ciceri was the author of a lithographed album of landscape studies intended primarily for instruction in draftsmanship. Together; these albums account for more than several hundred lithographed plates. The Ciceri album that appears to have been circulated most widely in the United States was "Le Paysage," inaugurated in 1844 and sold as "Picturesque Landscapes" through Goupil's Catalogue of the Publications of Goupil and Co. (New York, 1854 [a copy is in the Knoedler Archivum]), where each lithograph was priced at forty cents plain or eighty cents colored. Isabey, though by far the more important artist, was a less prominent presence in Goupil catalogues.

(30) Sebron was especially well suited to the task. A student of Louis Daguerre (1787-1851), early in his career he worked as a painter at Daguerre's Diorama in Paris.

(31) Neither is listed in Goupil's 1854 New York catalogue, but they do appear in the 1857 Paris catalogue (see n. 25)--at fifteen francs plain, thirty francs colored--or three and six dollars, respectively. Their presence in the Paris catalogue implies they were viable on the European market; their absence from the New York catalogue is hard to explain, particularly since the availability of both aquatints on the American market today indicates a fairly wide circulation in the United States at the time of publication.

(32) See Second Supplement to Catalogue of Goupil and Co. (New York, December 1856), p. 4, nos. 3383, 3384.

(33) John (Johann) Knoedler immigrated to the United States in 1854 and became partner in M. Knoedler and Company on October 1, 1870. His immigration papers (in the Knoedler Archivum) list his profession as "joiner;" leading to the conclusion that before assuming responsibility for Knoedler's print department, he ran the framing business.

(34) Rivals, but not for long; already on shaky financial footing when they published the chromolithograph, Williams, Stevens, Williams and Company disbanded in 1859.

(35) M. Knoedler Painting Sales Book No. 2, March 1867-December 1873, fols. 81-101 (Knoedler Archivum).

(36) The Niagara chromolithograph may have been considered virtually a painting. Gerald L. Carr states that, recognizing the poor quality of the Goupil and Company chromolithograph, Knoedler hired an anonymous artist to retouch each copy extensively in oil (Frederic Edwin Church: Catalogue Raisonne of Works of Art at Olana State Historic Site [Cambridge University Press, New York, 1994], p. 495).

(37) The history of the engraving is discussed ibid., pp. 495, 504-505.

(38) Catalogue of the Publications of Goupil and Co., no. 2250.

(39) Manhattan Island was a lithograph, 24 by 36 1/2 inches, which cost three dollars plain, eight dollars colored (ibid., no. 2257).

(40) Panorama of New York Harbor was a lithograph, 24 by 36 inches, which cost three dollars plain, six dollars colored (Second Supplement to Catalogue of Goupil and Co., no. 3382).