Chinoiserie: designs of the East and West

Attributed to John June after Augustin Heckel, Chinese Landskip 1, (1750-1760), etching.
Attributed to John June after Augustin Heckel, Chinese Landskip 1, (1750-1760), etching.
Attributed to John June after Augustin Heckel, Chinese Landskip 2, (1750-1760), etching.
Attributed to John June after Augustin Heckel, Chinese Landskip 2, (1750-1760), etching.

Occasionally, works of art in the Baillieu Library Print Collection will remain mysteries even after a bit of research, such as this series of five Chinese landscapes. I can say with some certainty that the artist was German/English painter Augustin Heckel, and the engraver was Englishman John June, and they were probably created around 1750-60. While the publisher, Thomas Bowles of London, published a number of compendiums of Chinese prints, what editions these landscapes were published in and where and what exactly they depict remains uncertain.

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The Mirror of Venus, in Print

Felix Jasinski after Edward Burne-Jones, The Mirror of Venus, 1896, engraving on vellum.
Felix Jasinski after Edward Burne-Jones, The Mirror of Venus, 1896, engraving on vellum.

If this engraving appears familiar, albeit here in less colourful tones, that is due to it being a reproduction of Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones’ painting of the same name from 1877. Far from a case of egregious artistic plagiarism, from the 17th-century onwards it was commonplace for engravings to be created based on popular paintings. As today one might visit an exhibit at a gallery and purchase a poster in the gift shop in lieu of owning a priceless original painting itself, reproductions made in print allowed a larger and more wide-spread audience to access and own works of art. Inscriptions in Latin on the edge of an engraving spoke to who had what role in the production of a print; an artist invenit (invented) the work, before an engraver sculpsit (engraved) the plate, and a publisher divulgavit (published) and distributed it (195).

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Going to the ballet—A new addition to the Rare Music Collection

The Baillieu Library’s Rare Music Collection has recently welcomed an exciting new addition. This work comprises two volumes, as part of a limited edition of five hundred, and was dedicated to a Ballets Russes performance of Les Fâcheux at Paris’ Théâtre de Monte Carlo in 1924. This performance was based on a three-part comedy of Molière’s, with music by Georges Auric, choreography by Bronislava Nijinska, along with costume and set design by Georges Braque.

Front cover of Les facheux: théatre serge de Diaghilew, Paris: Éditions des quatre chemins, 1924.
Front cover of Les facheux: théatre serge de Diaghilew, Paris: Éditions des quatre chemins, 1924.

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Ulimaroa: a name of curious origin on early maps of Australia

Franz J. J. von Reilly, Karte von der Inselwelt Polynesien oder dem funften Welttheile: nach Djurberg und Roberts. Vienna, 1795.
Franz J. J. von Reilly, Karte von der Inselwelt Polynesien oder dem funften Welttheile: nach Djurberg und Roberts. Vienna, 1795.

This map, titled Karte von der Inselwelt Polynesien oder dem fünften Welttheile: nach Djurberg und Roberts, or Map of the islands of Polynesia or the fifth part of the world: after Djurberg and Roberts is a 1795 map by Austrian cartographer Franz Johann Joseph von Reilly in the University’s rare and historical map collection.

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A leaf from medieval gradual

Catholic Church, leaf from a gradual, Austria/Germany, between 1075-1100.
Catholic Church, leaf from a gradual, Austria/Germany, between 1075-1100.

This beautiful piece of manuscript is a leaf from a 11th or 12th century gradual, mostly likely originating in Austria or Southern Germany. It features brown and red script on vellum, and several decorative and colourful illuminations. While it might seem strange for a collection to contain a single page from a manuscript, it was relatively common in the world of rare book selling in the early 20th to separate manuscripts into pages to make them more sellable to a larger audience. While on one hand, it seems reprehensible to have broken up manuscripts which had survived centuries for the sake of profit, it did achieve the goal of making these medieval manuscripts, if only a sliver of them, more accessible to a larger number of libraries and collectors around the world. The leaf also shows evidence of folding around the edges, which suggests is also could have been used as a binding stiffener in another later book. Bits and pieces of medieval manuscripts have a remarkable propensity to show up hidden within all sorts of more modern works before they are found by an intrepid librarian and brought again to the light.

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