Maurice Sendak was a Caldecott award-winning children’s book author and illustrator. The Brooklyn native illustrated more than 80 books by other authors before writing one himself: in 1963 he turned the children’s book world upside down with his first masterpiece, Where the Wild Things Are. Sendak’s dark, moody illustrations were a shocking contrast to the comparatively light and happy fare typically found in children’s books of the time. The main character, Max, like many of Sendak’s protagonists, acted like a real child, not some idealized version of youth. During his long career, Sendak wrote and illustrated more than 50 books, including Where the Wild Things Are (1963), In the Night Kitchen (1970) and Outside over There (1981). Sendak designed sets and costumes for stage versions of his books, and in the early 1980s created the sets for several operas, including Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Houston Grand Opera. He also collaborated with Carole King on the musical Really Rosie, producing the book, lyrics, and artwork.

Information Courtesy of Rago Arts, December, 2018.

Frank Weston Benson was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1862. He studied at the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston and the Academie Julian in Paris. Benson was a hunter and often depicted sporting scenes of birds in his artwork. The landscape around his studio on North Haven Island, Maine provided inspiration for his etchings and paintings. Benson taught at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and in the Society of Art in Portland, Maine.

Information courtesy of Harlowe-Powell Auction, July 2011.

A leading figure in American art at the end of the 19th century, Frank W. Benson earned renown in his own lifetime as one of the principle artists of the Boston school, and as a member of the influential group of painters called “The Ten.” Despite the acclaim he received from his contemporaries, Benson led a largely private life, devoted to his family, his friends and his art. The artist’s children served as his favorite models and Benson’s paintings of his family are among his most successful achievements.

Born and raised in Salem, Massachusetts, Benson received his earliest artistic training at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where his classmates included Willard Metcalf, Robert Reid and Edward Simmons. In the fall of 1883, Benson left Boston for Paris, where he spent three years studying art at the Academie Julian. The years following Benson’s return to Boston were eventful ones for the young artist, punctuated by his marriage to Ellen Perry Peirson in October of 1888 and his appointment as an instructor at the Museum School in April 1889.

His teaching career provided Benson with a steady income to support his growing family, but also left the artist plenty of time to paint; Benson’s work of this period consisted primarily of formal portraits and landscapes painted during his summers spent with close friends Edmund Tarbell and Abbott Thayer in New Hampshire.

Benson’s discovery of North Haven Island, off the coast of Maine, marked a turning point in both the artist’s personal and professional development. On his first visit in 1900, Benson was enchanted by the brilliant sunlight that spilled over the island’s open fields and the sweeping views of the sea and sky beyond. The Benson family returned to North Haven every summer thereafter, eventually purchasing Wooster Farm, a rambling Federal style farmhouse and barn set in the midst of grassy meadows and bordered on three sides by the sea.

In North Haven, with the barn converted into a studio and the old house brimming over with the Benson’s children and friends, Wooster Farm became an idyllic retreat for the artist. Free from competing influences, Benson’s individual style finally emerged. Nearly everyday was spent outdoors, berry-picking, picnicking on the beach, fishing or sailing, affording the artist the opportunity to paint his favorite subjects – his children – en plein air.

Information courtesy of Sotheby’s, December, 2008.

The decorative arts world has many “squishy” and vague vocabulary words, but few are “squishier” and vaguer than cartouche. Originally, the term comes from Egyptology and is used to describe a oval enclosing hieroglyphics and having a horizontal line at one end. (The line denotes royalty.) The oval had significance not unlike that of a closed circle, in that it was believed that an oval around a person’s name provided protection to that person. The strong association with the god-like royalty of ancient Egypt and the “good luck charm” nature of the symbol meant that it was eventually co-opted by the rest of the population and, as a result, it appears on all manner of structures and objects from the era.

Centuries later, when Egypt was a land divided constantly by conflicts, soldiers, seeing these ovals everywhere, are said to have found them to resemble the paper cartridges used in muskets. The French word for cartridge is cartouche and thus it became, in its original use, the term applied to this particular hieroglyphic element.

A Civil War-era example of a paper cartridge. (p4A item # D9865000)

Sterling silver vase with blank cartouche. (p4A item # E8906323)

Page and Book Sizes

You may not be able to judge a book by its cover, but you can at least tell its size, but to do that, you have to know a little bit about the printing process, which basically, at least when it comes to paper sizes, has two eras: the modern era and the hand press era. In the hand press era (pre-1820, for the most part), printing was done on large sheets, on both sides, and then the sheets were folded and stitched along the folds. (The spatial reasoning necessary to lay out a sheet’s worth of printing, knowing which way the text would appear and the pages would be ordered when folded, is impressive.) Each set of pages created from the same folded sheet was called a gathering and multiple gatherings would all be bound together to create the finished book. Sometimes the edges of the gathering were trimmed on the three exposed sides, but in early books, you might have to use a knife to slice through the folds of the gathering to separate each page yourself.

In this system of printing, page sizes were determined by how many times the original sheet was folded. A folio (2° or fo) would been folded once, down the center, and with two pages of text printed on either side, it would create four printed pages. This is designated as the “format” of the book. Quartos (4° or 4to) would be folded twice to produce four leaves/eight pages, octavos (8° or 8vo), three times for eight leaves/16 pages, etc., with the sizes continuing through duodecimo (twelvemo – 12° or 12vo), sextodecimo (sixteenmo – 16° or 16vo), octodecimo (eighteenmo – 18° or 18vo), trigesimo-secundo (thirty-twomo – 32° or 32vo), quadragesimo-octavo (forty-eightmo – 48° or 48vo) and sexagesimo-quarto (sixty-fourmo – 64° or 64vo).

One challenge with deciphering this is that in the hand press age in particular paper sizes were not typically standardized or, if they were, it was only within a particular region or country of manufacture. As a result, sizes of quartos, for example, can vary because while all quartos have gatherings that are folded twice, the size of the original sheet can vary. This means that quartos printed in Italy and quartos printed in England in the same time period can be different sizes.

In modern production, sizes are standardized and most books are quartos or octavos. There are designations for less typical sizes as well, which are heard more commonly in reference to prints than books: elephant folio, atlas folio and double elephant folio. As with all paper objects, condition is paramount, with size playing the largest role when it comes to prints but little role at all with books. In fact, most sellers do not give physical dimensions for books, as historically, much like today, books were not printed in multiple sizes at the same time and the other information: place of publication, year, etc., is more useful to collectors. Determining the rarity of books typically has more to do with when and where they were printed and what edition a volume is than the size, although of course, this does not necessarily apply when the books are out of the traditional size range. And books do not change sizes as prints can, so….

Print Sizes

Robert Riviere (1808 to 1882), born the son of a drawing master and the brother of artists, apprenticed as a bookseller and binder in London. In 1829, he established himself as a seller and binder in Bath, and in 1840, he removed to London and focused solely on bookbinding. His skill was recognized by both nobility and royalty, receiving commissions from Queen Victoria, exhibiting at the Crystal Palace Exhibition, and binding a special edition of the Crystal Palace Exhibition catalog presented to royals from throughout Europe. He was also chosen to rebind the Domesday Book.

Charles Dickens, Dealing with the Firm of Dombey and Son. London; Bradbury & Evans, 1848. (p4A item # E8949779)

Books bound (or rebound) by any incarnation of the Riviere bindery are highly sought after, and can command significant prices at auction. They are typically of colorful morocco (goatskin) and elaborately gilt-stamped, sometimes including pictorial designs on the boards. One of the most popular types of Riviere binding is referred to as a Cosway binding because they include inset miniature portraits on ivory inspired by the noted British miniaturist Richard Cosway (1742 to 1821). John H. Stonehouse (1864 to 1937) developed this binding at the bookselling firm of Henry Sotheran and Company. He selected Riviere to create the bindings and Mrs. C.B. Currie to execute the miniatures, beginning in the early 20th century.

Most Riviere bindings are stamped, and based on the stamp, they can usually be dated as follows:

“Bound by R. Riviere, Bath” refers to 1829 to 1832

“Bound by R. Riviere” refers to 1832 to 1840

“Bound by Riviere” refers to 1840 to circa 1860

“Bound by Riviere & Son” refers to 1880 to circa 1939

“Bound by Bayntun & Riviere, Bath, England” refers to 1939 and later

N.C. Wyeth was born Newell Convers Wyeth on October 22, 1882 in Needham, Massachusetts, the oldest of four boys, who spent their young lives outdoors doing farm chores, hunting, fishing, or exploring the countryside. N.C. displayed an early talent for art, encouraged by his mother, and by twelve, he was producing quality watercolors. After drafting courses at the Mechanics Arts School, he went on to study illustration art at the Massachusetts Normal Arts School and the Eric Pape School of Art, taught by George Loftus Noyes and Charles W. Reed.

In 1902, N.C. was invited to attended Howard Pyle’s School of Art in Wilmington, Delaware and Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, where he was able to study under the man known as the father of American illustration, and after just a few months with Pyle, Wyeth received his first commission as an illustrator, a bucking horse for The Saturday Evening Post‘s February 21, 1903 edition. In 1904, the Post again commissioned him to illustrate a Western story, and at Pyle’s insistence, Wyeth traveled west to gain firsthand knowledge of the world he was to paint. After visits to the Navajo and stints as a cowboy and a mail carrier, he returned to the East, only to travel west again in 1906 for another study trip.

On April 16, 1906, N.C. Wyeth married Carolyn Bockius of Wilmington, Delaware, and they settled on 18 acres in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, just across the Delaware-Pennsylvania line. Commissions flew in from all the prominent publications of the day, and Wyeth found little time for his own art. Although the illustration work offered a good living, the growth of Wyeth’s family kept pace, and he found it hard to leave commissioned work behind.

Henriette (1907), Carolyn (1909), Nathaniel (1911), Ann (1915), and Andrew (1917) proved to be a remarkable group of children, with Andrew Wyeth (father of James Browning “Jamie” Wyeth) becoming one of the greatest American artists of the 20th century, while Henriette (who married one of N.C.’s proteges, Peter Hurd) and Carolyn also made a living as artists. Ann, who also married one of her father’s students, John W. McCoy, was an artist and composer, while Nathaniel (who married Howard Pyle’s niece, Caroline), the only Wyeth to attend college, worked as an engineer for DuPont where he helped develop the plastic pop bottle.

In the 1910s, Wyeth’s illustration commissions began to shift, and he moved away from Western art for periodicals to illustration art for children’s books. Perhaps his most famous efforts were his first – the 1911 edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and editions of such classics as Kidnapped, Robin Hood and Rip Van Winkle followed over the next decade.

A first edition of an N.C. Wyeth-illustrated edition of Robin Hood. (P4a item # D9821092)

An N.C. Wyeth commercial illustration for Interwoven Socks. (P4a item # D9783249)

An N.C. Wyeth illustration from his early days at Chadds Ford. (P4a item # D9937983)

A 1938 painting by N.C. Wyeth of a fisherman hauling traps, done during his summers in Maine. (P4a item # A078296)

In some respects, Wyeth did not begin to gain respect for his own work until the 1930s, when museums began to seek out copies of his work. During this time, the family began summering at Eight Bells, an old sea captain’s home named after a Winslow Homer painting, and Wyeth began painting seascapes. In 1941, at the age of 59, he became a member of the National Academy.

Tragically, on October 19, 1945, N.C. Wyeth and his three-year old grandson, Newell Convers Wyeth II, Nathaniel’s son, were killed when Wyeth’s car was struck by a train while crossing tracks near Chadds Ford.

Wyeth, a prolific artist, is well-represented in a number of museum collections, including the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford and in Maine both the Portland Museum of Art and the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland. The Brandywine River Museum also maintains and offers tours of N.C. Wyeth’s home and studio.

John James Audubon was born in Haiti on April 26, 1785 on a sugar plantation, the son of Lt. Jean Audubon, a French naval officer, and Audubon’s mistress, Jeanne Rabin, a Louisiana chambermaid. After the death of Jeanne Rabin and a slave uprising that convinced Audubon’s father to give up his holdings in the colony, John James Audubon, still a toddler, and his younger sister returned to France where they were raised by their father and stepmother. In 1789, Lt. Audubon formally adopted the children, listing John James’s name as Jean-Jacques Fougere Audubon, a name that Audubon would anglicized in 1803 when he immigrated to America.

The young Audubon always loved birds, and his father encouraged his awareness of nature. Despite coming of age during some very turbulent times in France, Audubon’s childhood seems peaceful, and he was skilled in all the arts of the day – music, riding, fencing, etc. At twelve, his father put into motion plans to make his son a sailor, but with an aptitude for seasickness and not for math, these efforts failed.

In 1803, facing the fear of conscription into the Napoleonic Wars, Audubon set sail for the United States with a forged passport, bound for the family farm, Mill Grove, near Valley Forge, where it was hoped that he could develop the mining potential of the property and earn an adequate living. After a bout of yellow fever during the crossing, the ship’s captain left him in a Quaker-run boarding house, where he learned English during his recuperation before traveling to Mill Grove.

At Mill Grove, Audubon soon made the acquaintance of his neighbor, William Bakewell, as well as Bakewell’s daughter, Lucy. Audubon and Lucy quickly discovered that they had a great deal in common, spending time exploring the natural world together and Audubon began studying American birds in earnest. After contracting a fever and being nursed back to health by Lucy, Audubon decided he needed to return to France to seek his father’s blessing to marry and to make some plans for the family business ventures.

While in France in 1805, he met Charles-Marie D’Orbigny, a physician by trade and naturalist by hobby, who helped Audubon with his taxidermy efforts. He also encouraged Audubon to take a more scientific and orderly approach to his research, and Audubon returned to Mill Grove inspired. His renewed energy led to the creation of a nature museum, a space he quickly filled with products of his taxidermy, which improved as he labored to complete examples.

After abandoning the mining development, Audubon sold a portion of Mill Grove and traveled to New York, where he hoped to develop a business that would allow him to marry Lucy, as William Bakewell was reluctant to give his blessing to the young couple until Audubon demonstrated that he was able to support a family. Audubon opted to travel to Louisville, Kentucky, the booming Ohio River city, where he set himself up as a general store manager. Lucy followed in 1808 and the couple married. Children soon followed with sons Victor (1809) and John (1812), along with two daughters who died in infancy.

Unfortunately, like many storekeepers of the era, Audubon’s business struggled in the wake of Jefferson’s embargo act, and the Audubons moved to Henderson, Kentucky, where they quickly adapted to the frontier lifestyle. As business failed to pick up, Audubon found himself outdoors more and more often, hunting and fishing to feed the family.

Audubon was dealt another setback in 1812, when, after a visit back to Philadelphia, he returned home to find his entire collection of drawings devoured by rats, and yet again when the War of 1812 prevented him from relocating the family and the business to New Orleans. After partnering with his brother-in-law, things for the Audubons seemed to improve for several years. (At least financially, daughters Lucy and Rose died in 1817 and 1820, respectively.) However, hard times came again as the result of the Panic of 1819, and Audubon quickly found himself bankrupt and in jail as a debtor. Still, he continued to practice his skills as an artist, claiming small fees for portrait sketches.

Around this time, Audubon made set a lofty goal for himself, hoping to paint all the birds of North America. In the fall of 1820, the family headed south to document the birds of another region, with Audubon finding work for a time as a drawing tutor in Louisiana. Audubon continued to exchange his talents for goods or cash, drawing and painting portraits and offering lessons. (A good bit of the cash likely went back into lessons as Audubon studied with Thomas Cole, Thomas Sully, and other noted artists of the period whenever the opportunity present itself.) Meanwhile, most of the family’s support came from Lucy who taught school and tutored the children of wealthy Louisiana landowners.

An early oil-on-board painting by John James Audubon, done while the family was living near Oakley Plantation in Louisiana. (p4A item # D9791773)

Still, Lucy never lost faith in her husband, and in 1824, he returned to Philadelphia in the hopes of finding someone to publish his drawings. Despite a great deal of encouragement from the city’s artists, he had no luck, perhaps because of ill will on the part of some members of the Academy of Natural Sciences. After returning home, however, Lucy encouraged him to follow the advice he’d received in Philadelphia to travel to England, and in 1826, Audubon sailed from New Orleans with more than 300 of his drawings.

The British were fascinated with these first-hand images of the American frontier, and Audubon achieved celebrity status, touring the British Isles and raising funds for publication. Despite the huge printing costs (in excess of $115,000), Birds of America, complete with 435 hand-colored prints and the culmination of fourteen years of drawing, entered the publication process. Engraved copper plates, approximately 39 by 26 inches, produced prints that were then colored assembly line-style by dozens of colorists.

Audubon’s snowy owls, one of his few night scenes and one of the most highly valued of his prints. (p4A item # D9776242)

Audubon’s success was largely due to innovation. He worked with and portrayed birds and animals in different ways, shooting them with small shot and then using taxidermy methods to prepare them and position them from wire. His keen observation allowed him to pose them in motion, making them seem far more lifelike and interesting than they did in the work of his contemporaries. By using multiple birds in a single illustration, he could depict the male and female of the species and use a variety of postures to show the variety of markings.

Audubon headed home again in 1829, having conquered Britain and Europe and able to count kings and noblemen among his subscribers. Despite struggles with quality and debt, Birds of America went on to success, as did Audubon’s followup, Ornithological Biographies, and Audubon returned to the field, making numerous expeditions and working tirelessly, making time during the 1830s for another trip to England, accompanied by Lucy this time. His health began to worry him, and he was driven to travel and work to drum up subscriptions and interest, hoping to leave a comfortable income for his family. After relocating them to an estate on the Hudson River, he published another edition of Birds of America, this one in octavo size and with additional plates.

The first octavo American edition of Birds of America. (p4A item # D9978800)

Despite his best efforts, by 1848, Audubon began to slide into senility and dementia, and he died at home on January 27, 1851. His final project, Viviparious Quadrupeds of North America, done in connection with Rev. John Bachman and published in 1852, was completed by his sons and son-in-law, with his son John finishing most of the drawings.

A Canada lynx folio from the Audubon and Bachman Viviparious Quadrupeds of North America. (p4A item # D9846219)

Hollie Davis, p4A Senior Editor, August 11, 2009

Frederick Maxfield Parrish was born July 25, 1870 in Philadelphia to Stephen Parrish, an American artist famous for his landscapes, illustrations and engravings and his wife Elizabeth Bancroft Parrish. It’s not surprising that, finding himself surrounded by the tools of his father’s trade, that Frederick (he would begin to use Maxfield as his name later in life) would begin to draw to amuse himself. Around 1881, the Parrish family traveled to Europe, and during the trip, Frederick contracted typhoid. It was during his recuperation that he turned his attention to art in earnest under his father’s tutelage.

Maxfield studied widely as a young man, abroad in England and France, and at home at Haverford College, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and at the Drexel Institute, where he had the opportunity to work with Howard Pyle, one of the greatest illustrators in American history. While at the Drexel Institute, he also met Lydia Austin, a young instructor, who he would marry in 1895. Parrish himself found work as an illustrator, working in Philadelphia until 1898, by which time his various magazine illustrations for publications and his burgeoning career as the illustrator, especially of children’s books (for authors such as L. Frank Baum and Kenneth Grahame), allowed the young couple to purchase a home, The Oaks, near his parents in New Hampshire.

A Maxfield Parrish-illustrated copy of Edith Wharton’s Italian Villas and Their Gardens. (p4A item # D9749561)

Susan was initially hired to assist Lydia Parrish with the care of the Parrish children. (Perhaps due to Maxfield’s health concerns, the Parrishes waited until relatively late in life, for the time, to have children, with Lydia being almost 40 when their youngest child was born.) Susan quickly became Maxfield’s model and assistant, and eventually, they began an affair. Estranged from Lydia, who continued to live in the main house on the property, Maxfield ultimately moved into his studio where he lived with Susan.

Print of Maxfield Parrish’s Daybreak, one of the many works for which Susan Lewin served as a model. (p4A item # D9972315)

Susan certainly must have served as a muse, because Parrish’s popularity skyrocketed in the years between 1905 and 1920. His art was in demand by publishers (he did dozens of covers for Collier’s) and advertisers from Colgate to Oneida, and he also had murals commissioned by wealthy patrons like Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. Another mural, created in the Tiffany studio, incorporated 100,000 pieces of Tiffany glass, and drew the attention of Cyrus Curtis, the owner of the Saturday Evening Post, who commissioned a mural for the Post’s Philadelphia headquarters. (Many of Parrish’s murals still decorated the public spaces they were designed for, and visitors can see them in places as varied as the Curtis Building in Philadelphia and the St. Regis’s bar in New York.)

A Maxfield Parrish-designed tobacco tin for Old King Cole tobacco. (p4A item # B107122)

Success allowed him to shift his focus away from advertising by the mid-1920s. (He was so well-known that by 1925, it was estimated that 25% of the homes in America owned a Parrish print and the deep lapis lazuli blue he favored had become known as ‘Parrish blue’. Parrish chose to move toward painting works of art that reflected, in some ways, his first job as an illustrator, and in many ways, this is the era of work for which Parrish is best remembered, androgynous, mystical figures in fantasy landscapes. By 1931, he announced that he was changing directions yet again, concentrating this time on landscapes.

A Maxfield Parrish landscape, Winter Dusk, from 1943 (p4A item # C215356)

In 1953, Lydia, who had for the most part left Maxfield in 1911, died, and he was left alone with Susan. Susan, perhaps frustrated by Maxfield’s lack of interest in marrying her after so many years together, left to marry someone else in 1960, and it was at that point that Maxfield Parrish stopped painting at the age of 90. He remained at The Oaks in Plainfield, New Hampshire until his death at 95 on March 30, 1966.