Prints, Posters, & Drawings

Surveying a Collection
Joseph Elizabeth Robins Pennell Collection
" Rotherhithe."
Drawings, etchings and drypoint.
1860
Prints and Photographs Division

One of the most celebrated and controversial artists of his era, James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), took the thriving life along the Thames as his inspiration for "Rotherhithe". Often preferring to work in situ, Whistler is said to have accidentally made a long vertical scratch in the plate for Rotherhithe when surprised by a sudden noise. The Library of Congress is a major center for studies of this expatriate American artist, offering scholars an unparallel opportunity to study the his prints, drawings, personal manuscripts, and archives in one facility.

Treatment: A piece-by-piece survey of a collection is the first step in many of the conservation projects at the Library of Congress. Conservators and curators worked together to inspect and set treatment priorities for the full collection of more than 300 Whistler lithographs, etchings, drypoints, and original drawings. They were then given the requisite treatments and re-housed.

King Solomon
Yozef Kroger
[King Solomon]
Poster print
Prints and Photographs Division

This is the only Yiddish theater poster in the Library's collections and reportedly one of the most elaborately printed.

Treatment: The poster was in extremely fragile condition. The Conservation Division created paper inserts for losses, repaired tears, and provided some in-painting.

A Compelling Treatment
Poland Fights Nazi Dragon - Polish War Relief, 1943.
Arthur Szyk
Halftone on paper.
Printed by Central Print and Litho. Co., Chicago.
Polish Posters
1900-1939
Prints & Photographs Division

The Polish Poster Collection contains approx. 6000 posters dating from 1900 to the present. Many of the latter group are found only at the Library of Congress

Treatment: Conservation treatmemt was prompted by an exhibition of posters in the librarian's reception area at the Federal Reserve Board. Conservators removed tape, mended tears, and created paper inserts to fill in losses.

The Photographic Times
Mazzanovich
[The Photographic Times]
Lithograph, c. 1890s
Prints & Photographs Division

This poster is the earliest advertisement in the Library's collections pertaining to the subject of photography.

Treatment: This poster was in extremely fragile condition and could not be handled by researchers due to paper losses and tears. Conservators applied inserts, mended tears, and touched up the newly repaired areas.

Journaling the Construction of the U.S. Capitol
Montgomery Meigs Collection
[Engineering Drawings] 19th c.
Manuscript Division

The Montgomery Meigs collection contains over 11,000 items and varies greatly in content, including bound and unbound printed and handwritten materials, such as journals, drawings, paintings, photographs, memorabilia and many oversize maps, photographic images, and architectural plans. As a member of the Army Engineer Corp., Meigs was instrumental in a number of important federal building projects in Washington, D.C., including the Pension Building, the Washington Aqueduct, and the wings and dome of the U.S. Capitol.

Treatment: For Meigs's journals, conservators created a series of boxes to house three diaries each. They also built a special box to house 12 pocket diaries in slots designed specifically to the dimensions of each. They labeled each slot by year. Conservators flattened, mended, and encapsulated oversize foldouts from the journals, adding labels to indicate their original journal locations. They placed corresponding labels in the journals. They also encapsulated loose journal pages between buffered sheets and then boxed them.

Poster Power
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Collection
Manuscript Division

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in the first decade of the twentieth century and became an important vehicle for the advancement of civil rights for blacks in the United States. The NAACP collection, which includes visual materials such as posters, documents the battle for equal employment opportunities for blacks, the drive for equal legal protection, and the struggle against segregation, discrimination, lynching, and other forms of racial oppression.

Treatment: Paper conservators washed and deacidified posters from the collection. They lined them with Japanese tissue for support, and encapsulated them in polyester sheeting to make them easy for researchers to handle.

Large Triumphal Carriage
Albrecht Dürer
[Large Triumphal Carriage, fifth edition, Venice]
Multi-block woodcut 1589
Prints & Photographs Division

Early in the 16 century, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I chose the woodcut as a vehicle to mount a public relations campaign aimed at an upper-class audience of leading nobles and imperial officials throughout his empire. The Triumph of Maximilian I was a graphic arts program comprising three gigantic woodcut assemblages: the Triumph Arch, the Triumphal Procession, and the Large Triumphal Carriage--a work which art historian, Hyatt Mayor called "Maximilian's program of paper grandeur." The design and execution of this project materialized over 14 years, between 1512 and 1526, an resulted in the production of 192, 137, and 8 woodcuts for the Arch, Procession, and Carriage respectively. The truly monumental scale of these compositions was unprecedented, and reflected the reputation of Maximilian I, the House of Hapsburg, and the Holy Roman Empire. Intended to represent Maximilian as a latter-day Roman Emperor, the ambitious project engaged the inspiration of a philosopher, an architect, and an historian/astronomer, in collaboration with artists and block cutters who were supervised by Albrecht Dürer.

Treatment: Paper conservators from the Library collaborated with a conservator at the National Gallery of Art who had worked on an impression of Dürer's Triumphal Arch. Library conservators removed the backing and reassembled the multi-block woodcut.

Jitterbug!
Harman Foundation Collection Archives
[William H. Johnson, 1935-1945, and Jitterbugs II and III]
Screen prints, ca. 1941
Prints and Photographs Division

William Henry Johnson's "Jitterbugs" pulse with color and cool. Through strong, sculptural forms, and a Cubist dynamic-the artist shows dancers that are very modern, the living embodiment of style and syncopation. Johnson's work has now been widely studied and celebrated. It was considered controversial by many of his contemporaries and still defies easy categorization--combining modern abstraction, expressionism, "naive" art, and the influence of the Harlem-based New Negro Movement which encouraged African American creativity drive by its own innate identity. The Library holds 27 prints by Johnson, Established in 1922 by the real estate magnate William E. Harmon, the Harmon Foundation was a key sponsor of African-American artists during the Harlem Renaissance. Through a series of juried, traveling exhibits, the work of such artists as William Henry Johnson, Hale Aspacio Woodruff, Allan Rohan Crite, James Lesesne Wells, and Wilmer Angier Jennings was brought to the attention of a national audience. The Library of Congress holds more than 150 rare, and important prints and drawings by Harmon Foundation artists, as well as documentary photographs and an extensive collection of manuscripts and archival material.

Treatment: Conservators consolidated friable media and removed tape and adhesive from the Johnson prints and when appropriate re-mounted them on stable supports. Work continues for the full collection of Harmon Foundation prints and drawings.

Rembrandt Album
Rembrandt Restrike Album
[The Basan Recueil]
Etchings, posthumous impressions from original Rembrandt plates
1807
Prints & Photographs Division

A masterful and inventive printmaker, Rembrandt often changed his prints radically from state to state, and impression to impression. Scholars may appreciate the depth of his artistic and technical brilliance by comparing lifetime impressions of Rembrandt etchings from the Library's extensive collection of old master prints with posthumous impressions from the original plates. The prints had been bound with a vellum spine and paste paper sides. The binding was in very fragile condition. Most of the spine was missing and the front cover was detached. Because the plates had been separate sheets of paper they had been sewn together in groups by an overcast sewing method which was damaging to the edge of the prints.

Treatment: The album was disbound. The sewing was removed and the prints were separated. The spine edges of the prints were repaired with Japanese tissue and hinges were attached. In the new new binding the dewing was done through the hinges and not through the prints. The album was rebound in vellum and paste paper binding. The original binding was retained and housed with the album.

Yellow Submarine:
Max, the Blue Meany
Caroline and Erwin Swann Collection of Caricature and Cartoon
["Yellow submarine" and "Max, the blue meany"]
Black ink and acrylic on acetate
1968
Prints & Photographs Division

The Caroline and Erwin Swann Collection of Caricature and Cartoon contains 2,085 drawings, prints, and paintings related to the art of caricature, cartoon, and illustration.

Treatment: The Caroline and Erwin Swann Memorial Fund provided funding to the Library to conserve the collection. In 1993, conservation began as a concentrated team effort. Treatments included paper removal, paper mends, paper in-filling, and backing removals. In addition, conservators designed specially sized uni-mats to house the large comic strip and political cartoon drawings in the collection.

Builders
Harry Sternberg
[Builders]
Lithograph
1935 or 1936
Prints & Photographs Division

The Ben and Beatrice Goldstein Foundation Collection contains 3,600 drawings, prints, and paintings, including Harry Sternberg's "Builders."

Treatment: Conservation efforts began in earnest in 1998 for the 1999 exhibition "Life of the People: Realist Prints and Drawings from the Ben and Beatrice Goldstein Collection, 1912-1948." Some 59 works on paper were conserved for the exhibition.

Hoboken
Stuart Davis
[Hoboken]
Watercolor
1916
Prints & Photographs Division

The Ben and Beatrice Goldstein Foundation Collection contains 3,600 drawings, prints, and paintings, including Stuart Davis's "Hoboken."

Treatment:Conservation efforts began in earnest in 1998 for the 1999 exhibition "Life of the People: Realist Prints and Drawings from the Ben and Beatrice Goldstein Collection, 1912-1948." Some 59 works on paper were conserved for the exhibition.

Pittsburgh
Robert Minor
[Pittsburgh]
Drawing on paper; lithographic crayon and Indian ink
1916
Prints & Photographs Division

The Ben and Beatrice Goldstein Foundation Collection contains 3,600 drawings, prints, and paintings, including Robert Minor's "Pittsburgh," which depicts a soldier bayonetting a worker during a Pittsburgh strike.

Treatment: Conservation efforts began in earnest in 1998 for the 1999 exhibition "Life of the People: Realist Prints and Drawings from the Ben and Beatrice Goldstein Collection, 1912-1948." Some 59 works on paper were conserved for the exhibition.

Cy and Ty
The Benjamin K. Edwards Collection.
[Cy Young]
[Tyrus Raymond Cobb]
[New York Yankees]
Prints & Photographs Division

These baseball cards show such legendary figures as Ty Cobb stealing third base for Detroit, Tris Speaker batting for Boston, and pitcher Cy Young posing formally in his Cleveland uniform. Other notable players include Connie Mack, Walter Johnson, King Kelly, and Christy Mathewson. The collection includes 2,100 early baseball cards dating from 1887 to 1914. They were originally packaged with cigarettes. Cigarette card collector Benjamin K. Edwards preserved these baseball cards in albums with more than 12,000 other cards on many subjects. After his death, Edwards's daughter gave the albums to noted poet and Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg, who donated them to the Library's Prints and Photographs Division in 1954.

Treatment: Conservators surveyed the albums for wear and damage. Cards were re-housed in plastic sleeve pockets with backing boards and will be stored in archival quality 3-ring binders.

Wounded Escaping from the Burning Woods in the Wilderness
Alfred Waud
[Wounded Escaping from the Burning Woods in the Wilderness]
Pencil and Chinese white on brown paper
May 6, 1864.
Prints & Photographs Division

More than 1,100 sketches by Alfred Waud are among the Library's collection of Civil War drawings, prints, and photographs, which comprise the nation's most comprehensive visual record of the Civil War. At least one drawing has blood stains on it, evidence of the dangers involved in sketching in the field.

Treatment: Because of the popularity of the drawings with researchers, the Conservation Division undertook a multi-year effort to restore the drawings. All of the drawing were attached with strong adhesive to poor-quality backing boards, which conservators removed manually. However, the old adhesive had often oozed through to the front of the drawing, requiring extensive work to remove it. Conservators dry cleaned each item, mended tears with Japanese tissue paper, and filled losses with compatible Western paper toned to match the color of the drawing paper.

Earliest Copyrighted Posters
[Posters for D'Oyly Carte production of H.M.S. Pinafore, Mikado, Pirates of Penzance]
Woodblock
1879
Prints & Photographs Division

These irreplaceable posters are some of the earliest copyrighted woodblock posters in the Library.

Treatment: The three, 3-sheet posters were in very fragile condition. They were extremely brittle, with flaking paper, losses and tears. Conservators dry cleaned the posters, washed and deacidified them and mended them using Japanese tissue and wheats starch paste. They were fully lined to provide support and to allow further use and access.

Blackened Snow Scene
Theodore Geisel
[Dr. Seuss Snow Scene]
Prints & Photographs Division

This cartoon by Theodore Geisel, more commonly known as Dr. Seuss, appeared in a 1931 edition of Judge. It is part of the Caroline and Erwin Swann Collection of Caricature and Cartoon, which contains 2,085 drawings, prints, and paintings related to the art of caricature, cartoon, and illustration.

Treatment: The white out that Geisel used for snow and ice had turned black due to interaction between lead in the white out and sulphur in the air (air pollution.) Conservators applied a solution of ethereal hydrogen peroxide over the white out. The hydrogen reacted with the lead, causing the white out to turn white once again.

Cows on the Mall: An Early View of the Capitol
John Rubens Smith
[West Front of the United States Capitol]
Watercolor
ca. 1828.
Marian S. Carson Collection
Prints & Photographs Division

Acquired by the Library of Congress in 1993 as the celebrated 100 millionth collection, the archives of John Rubens Smith (1775-1849) includes almost 750 watercolors, prints, drawings, and some manuscript material, encompassing works not only by Smith, but by family members and pupils as well. Selected works from these archives have been conserved and housed, including this view of the nearly completed U.S. Capitol. The cows grazing on what is now the National Mall offer surprising evidence that America's rural character persisted even as urbanization transformed the nation.

Treatment: This painting was conserved as part of a project that began in 1987 to conserve 40,000 important drawings that document the history and development of architecture, design and engineering in the nation's capital. The project, Washingtoniana II, was made possible through support from the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation. One of the chief goals of the project has been to flatten, stabilize, and provide safe housing for the items so they can be accessed by researchers.

East Front of the U.S. Capitol
Thornton, William
[U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C.
East elevation, low dome]
Architectural drawing : watercolor and ink with pencil
ca. 1795
Prints & Photographs Division

All of Thornton's drawings were conserved beginning In 1987, when the Library began a project to conserve 40,000 important drawings that document the history and development of architecture, design and engineering in the nation's capital. The drawings, which date from the late 18th century to the 1980s, were acquired by the Library through copyright deposit, purchase and gift. The collection includes items from some of the most important architectural competitions held in the United States, including the United States Capitol Competition of the early 1790s.

Treatment: Many of the drawings are on good quality handmade laid or wove papers; however, a large number are on poor quality wood pulp, lignin-containing papers that become brittle over time. To complicate matters, the drawings are composed using a wide variety of inks, pencils, watercolors and other media. In addition, the size of objects and their formats vary considerably, from sketchbooks and simple renderings to final master presentation drawings that were submitted to clients or in competitions. Conservators removed tape, replaced missing paper, and removed grime as part of the Washingtoniana II project made possible through support from the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation.

I Won the Nobel Prize for Literature. What was your crime?
Bill Mauldin
["I Won the Nobel Prize for Literature. What was your crime?"]
Ink, crayon and white out
1958
Prints & Photographs Division

This is one of 1700 political cartoons from the Bill Mauldin Papers, which include nearly 10,000 works by some 500 artists.

Treatment: A poor quality window mat was attached to the front of the item obscuring the original text. Conservators removed the window mat revealing the inscription. They removed any residue adhesive, drycleaned the item and mended tears and losses with Japanese tissue and wheat starch paste.

Entrance of the Senate Chamber
Benjamin Henry Latrobe
[United States Capitol, Washington, D.C., North Wing. Gallery of the entrance of the Senate Chamber. Detail of Magnolia order]
Drawing : wash, watercolor, and ink
1809
Prints & Photographs Division

Thomas Jefferson hired Benjamin Henry Latrobe to complete the Capitol in 1803. This completely changed the artistic direction of the building. Trained in Europe, Latrobe's style was viewed as radical -- vastly different from the Italian Renaissance style of Thornton. Latrobe's modern neoclassical vision brought both light and space into the Capitol.

Treatment: While it may take years to treat all of the Capitol drawings and correct the damage caused by the paste described in the previous example, so far a good start has been made by curators in the Prints and Photographs Division and conservators in the Conservation Division toward securing these important chapters of the nation's architectural history. With the continued application of conservation expertise to bear on the problem, the Library is confident that these magnificent drawings will be preserved for future generations of users.

Around and Around
Frank Lloyd Wright
[Architectural drawing for automobile objective]
drawing on Japanese paper, graphite and colored pencil
1925
Prints and Photographs Division

Gordon Strong, a Chicago businessman of considerable wealth who became captivated by Sugarloaf Mountain, an outcrop of the Blue Ridge Mountains. He commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to erect a structure on the summit of Sugar Loaf Mountain that would serve as an objective for short motor trips, primarily from nearby Washington and Baltimore. Sugarloaf was Wright's first project to explore circular geometries as a means of fully shaping architectural space, and he acknowledged difficulties in depicting its complex forms. The result was a design without exact parallel.

Treatment: Conservators dry cleaned the design. They used chemical and manual treatments to remove tape from the back of the drawing because it was causing the front to pucker. They repaired large tears using Japanese tissue and wheat starch paste. They also created toned inserts to fill in major areas of loss.

Drawing the Wall
Maya Ying Lin
[Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Competition drawing]
[Architectural drawing showing memorial as plan and perspective; includes textual description]
Drawing on paper mounted on board : mixed media, color
1980 or 1981
Prints & Photographs Division

This design was the winner of one of the largest architectural competitions ever held. Popularly known as "The Wall," this communal gravestone personalized the war in a way that television could not. It has become a profound national symbol and a point of reference for a new tradition of American memorial structures that name the individual dead, reviving public interest in and support for this building form.

Treatment: An elaborate housing was constructed to support and protect the item to permit further access and use throughout the years to come.

Eames Collection
Charles and Ray Eames
[Eames Collection]
Paper,
Prints & Photographs Division

Treatment: Conservators humidified, flattened, and dry cleaned paper items from the Eames collection. They used Japanese tissue and wheat starch paste to mend tears. They also delicately removed double-stick tape from some of the items.

Cross Section of the U.S. Captitol
Stephen Hallet
[Cross Section Through the Conference Room of Fifth Design for the Captitol]
Drawing, 1793
Prints & Photographs Division

Treatment: By 1998 essentially all of the drawings had received basic preservation housing. However, a number of late 18th to early 19th century master presentation drawings had a special problem that required further attention.

These small to oversize drawings had been backed with up to three layers of bond paper, acidic kraft paper and linen fabric using an adhesive that was now causing damage. The culprit was a water-soluble paste used in the Government Printing Office between 1930 and 1960 for a variety of treatment applications. (The GPO established a branch bindery with the Library in 1900.) The paste was beginning to turn brown and migrate through the backing layers into the irreplaceable drawings.

To address this problem, the affected drawings were earmarked for a second phase of more intensive conservation treatment. During this past year, conservators have begun to remove the backing material and the damaging adhesive from 16 of the several hundred affected drawings. This involves dry cleaning the front of each drawing with erasers so that subsequent use of moisture does not "set" the dirt. Next, the painstaking process of removing the backing layers begins. With the drawing face down, the linen backing is peeled away to reveal the underlying paper backing. This second layer of paper is mechanically removed with the aid of scalpels, spatulas and peeling, finally exposing the last layer of backing paper.

Removing this last layer requires the application of limited moisture to the backing paper using damp blotters, steaming, or felted Gore-Tex, sometimes with the addition of enzymes to dissolve the adhesive.

In cases in which the drawings are stained and yellowed, and their media is not soluble in water, washing in purified water is carried out. Once the final backing material is completely removed, tears are mended with Japanese paper and a reversible wheat starch paste. Then the drawings are carefully flattened before being placed into a mat or other protective enclosure.

Musashino (Fields of Musashi)
Woodblock prints
1894
Asian Division

Treatment: Conservators removed mold and water stains and gently washed the twelve individual woodblock prints to remove discoloration. To enhance both security and protection of the prints and covers, conservators created an accordion-fold album so that each print is housed in a separate folder and can be removed for exhibition or study. Although the finished volume, of leafcast paper, looks like a bound book, the prints remain in loose format to stay true to the original.

Trend-Setting Poster
Theophile Alexandre Steinlen
[Yvette Guilbert. Ambassadeurs]
Color lithograph, 1894
Prints & Photographs Division

Steinlen, who produced more that 50 lithographic posters, influenced generations of poster designers through his elegant and graceful command of the craft. This particular example epitomizes Steinlen's expertise and is one of the finest specimens of French poster design of the decade.

Treatment: The large poster had been folded repeatedly and had broken along the folds. Conservators dry cleaned and washed it, and painted in where the pigment had flaked away. Because of the large size of the poster, a polyester material was used to line it for added strength and flexibility.

Thomas Hurr
Fraktur Collection
Print, 1828
Prints & Photographs Division

Beginning in the 1720s significantly larger numbers of German Lutherans and German Reformed arrived in Pennsylvania. Many were motivated by economic considerations. Their tradition of documenting births, marriages and deaths with certificates written in stylized script came with them to the new world.

Treatment: The item was drycleaned and flaking paint was consolidated. It was sprayed and washed with a water/alcohol combination, then humidified and flattened in a humidity chamber. The item was then lined with Japanese tissue paper and wheat starch paste and placed in museum quality window mat board construction to aid in providing a safe storage and permitting use and access.

Fool for Posters
Morton, Martha
A Fool of Fortune
Theatrical Poster Collection Color lithograph, 1896
Prints & Photographs Division

Treatment: Conservators removed adhesive tape mends and linen backing. After the adhesive residue was removed sections of the poster were washed separately. The sections were rejoined and relined using japanese tissue paper and wheat starch paste. Areas of loss were inpainted and the fianl piece was encapsulated in polyester sheeting for support and strength during storage.

Cerveza Moctezuma
Artist Posters
1930's or 1940's
Prints & Photographs Division

Treatment: Over 10 feet of pressure sensitive tape ws removed from the item. Poultices were used to remove adhesive residue and draw out the staining. The item was washed and relined using Japanese tissue and wheat starch paste. The losses were inpainted using colored pencils and the item was encapsulated to provide strength in storage and handling.