Wyverns, gryphons and acorns amidst the foliage: two rare early 16th century bindings by Nicholas Spierinck uncovered in the Rare Books Collection

What makes working with rare books so intriguing is the opportunity it delivers to follow a trail of clues – Sherlock Holmes-like – to trace an object’s origin and story through time.  Two excised bindings recently located in the Rare Book Room, have inspired one such stimulating pursuit…

An intact Spierinck binding

In 2008 the Baillieu Library was excited to purchase a rare original intact binding by the early Cambridge stationer Nicholas Spierinck, generously funded by the Ivy May Pendlebury Bequest.  The beautifully tanned calfskin cover encases a 1512 Paris edition of the works of 3rd-century Christian theologian, Origen Adamantius (b.184/185 – d.253/254), entitled Origenis Adamantii Operum tomi duo priores… .  At the time of the book’s acquisition, it was (and remains) the only known example of a complete Spierinck binding held in an Australian institution, bearing his personal binder’s mark, and incorporating his signature decorative schema of wyverns, gryphons and acorns.  A former Baillieu Library Rare Books Curator, Pam Pryde, described this unique acquisition and binding in her December 2008 Collections magazine article.  An animated 3D view of the binding, providing close inspection of Spierinck’s monogram and decorative devices is available here.

 

Two dis-bound Spierinck cover panels

In a recent intriguing twist to the tale, an uncatalogued box of bindings in the Rare Books Collection has been found to contain a pair of rare dis-bound Spierinck covers, together with 13 binding fragments from other provenances and time periods.  It appears that the samples were amassed by an unidentified donor, as a study collection for research and teaching.  The envelopes containing the two Spierinck bindings are clearly marked with his name in a 20th century hand; this attribution is conclusively confirmed by the presence of Spierinck’s distinctive stamp on both panels, which match exactly with those on the intact Origenis binding.

At first inspection, it is unclear whether the two dis-bound panels came from the same or different books, as one has been cut down in size and is 15mm smaller on each side than the other.  A shared provenance, however, seems very likely as both specimens bear pin holes at the same points, where the clasp and straps used to latch the panels would have once been attached to the covers, front and back.

16th century Cambridge book trade

In the early 16th century, the inland port of Cambridge was well placed to service its university’s growing appetite for books, being situated on an established river trading route, 40 miles from the Channel.  At this time, the majority of foreign language books (including the bulk of scholarly works which were written in Latin) were printed on the continent, and imported into England in loose form for binding and sale.  The burgeoning print market attracted foreign traders who set up mixed commercial enterprises as stationers, variously dealing in the importation, sale and binding of books.[i]  Many of these European artisans had migrated from the major book production centres of Paris, Basel and the lower Rhine, bringing their craft skills and ornamental influences with them.[ii] The first University of Cambridge printer, John Siberch (c1476–1554), was an established member of the German book trade before settling in the English town, where he operated from 1520-1522.[iii]

Nicholas Spierinck, fl. 1505-d.1545-6

With the passing of the centuries the names of most early English binders have passed into obscurity.  These anonymous ghosts are known today by their evocative decorative devices, such as ‘the fruit and flower binder’, ‘the fishtail binder’, ‘the half stamp binder’, ‘the huntsman binder’, ‘the octagonal rose binder’,  ‘the blank book binder’, and – my favourite – ‘the bat binder’.[iv] The historical record is much clearer for Nicholas Spierinck, as his appointment on 20th July 1534, as one of three official stationers (with Garrett Godfrey and Segar Nicholson) to the University of Cambridge, ensured that his name was inscribed in the official registers for posterity.[v]

Nicholas Spierinck, a member of a Netherlandish family of stationers, arrived in Cambridge sometime between 1503 and 1506, a binder of the same name having worked for Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy between 1469 and 1475.  By 1516 Spierinck held the office of warden at St Mary’s Church in the centre of Cambridge, and his will (dated 20th August 1545) confirms that he became a successful merchant and a citizen of some standing.  He bequeathed a brewery at Cross Keys to his grandson Nycholas (which was still in operation in 1915), silver and coral beads to his wife Agnes and  ‘Kateryn’ (probably his daughter) and the residue of his estate to his son, ‘William Spyrynke’, who had by that time taken charge of the family book binding operations.[vi]

Blind stamped binding

An expanding English book trade, injected with an influx of skilled foreign labour, could not help but be influenced by continental fashions in binding and manufacture.  The outmoded medieval technique of decorating covers with hand-tooled patterns, gave way to the more efficient ‘blind stamping’ method (blind referring to the absence of gold).  This system used heated metal block plates, commonly bearing pictorial designs, to impress decorations on the moistened leather panels.[vii]

The commercial potential of binding books in a ‘house style’ was exploited by binders and booksellers as an early form of corporate branding and advertising.  Hence the practice adopted by different stationers to apply their trade mark panel to books sold from their premises.  Blind stamped panel bindings were typically employed as pairs, with the same coupling used by binders on many books in their ‘stable’.[viii]  There were an estimated 200 such panels in use in various combinations between 1485 and 1555.[ix]

The two newly-located Spierinck covers are examples of the two most commonly used panels associated with his workshop, which is known to have produced as many as 35 pressings of the upper panel (depicting The Annunciation).[x]   As evidenced by all extant examples, it was always used by Spierinck in combination with the lower panel (depicting the legend of St Nicholas), illustrating the three boys who were cut up and pickled by an innkeeper and then restored to life by the passing saint.   A black and white image of an intact Spierinck binding using this pairing of panels is reproduced in Gray’s The earlier Cambridge stationers & bookbinders and the first Cambridge printer.[xi]

In tandem with blind stamping, cylindrical hand rolls were used as labour-saving devices, to imprint decorative bands across the leather, often incorporating a binder’s or bookseller’s distinctive ornamental motif or signature.[xii]  We are very fortunate to have a splendid example of Spierinck’s principal hand roll (he had six) in the decoration of the Origenis binding, which can be compared with the border patterns used on the blind cover panels.

Further investigation and analysis

As with many historical conundrums, some questions about the panels remain unanswered, and the fragments recently uncovered in the Rare Books Collection will benefit from further conservation and investigation.  Both pieces of leather binding were removed from their original boards and pasted onto parchment mountings, sometime in the early 20th century.  This has obscured the reverse of each panel and evidence of how the leather was cut and placed over the boards.  Middleton notes in his history of English bookbinding techniques that Spierinck was one of the last binders to use corner-mitring to achieve a precise meeting of the turned leather edges at the inside corners.  This technique involved the cutting of a ‘tongue’ which was incised after the leather had been turned over from the front of the board.  The outstanding finish achieved using the method is evident in the Origenis binding, and it would be interesting to find evidence about how the corners of the dis-bound panel fragments were treated. [xiii]

Until this research can be undertaken, how curious it is to ponder that these three Spierinck examples, which emanated from the same workshop in 16th century Cambridge, should be reunited after travelling separate paths, and be housed several shelves away from each other at the University of Melbourne, some 500 years later.

Susan Thomas, Rare Books Curator

Endnotes

[i] Weale, p. xxix

[ii] McKitterick, p. x

[iii] Venn, p. 73.  Incidentally, Siberch was a great friend of Erasmus, to whom he introduced Spierinck.

[iv] Oldham, 1952, p. x

[v] Weale, p. xxvii

[vi] Gray & Palmer, pp. 31-32

[vii] Middleton, pp. 168-9

[viii] Pearson, p. 50

[ix] Hobson, pp. [89]-90

[x] Oldham, pp. 19, 42

[xi] Gray, Plate XVI – Evangelia, 1508.

[xii] Harthan, p. 11

[xiii] Middleton, p. 151

Bibliography & further reading

British Library. Database of bookbindings. Accessed 10 March 2017 http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/bookbindings/

Gray, George & William Palmer.  Abstracts from the wills and testamentary documents of printers, binders and stationers of Cambridge, from 1504-1699. London: Bibliographical Society, 1915.

Gray, George. The earlier Cambridge stationers & bookbinders and the first Cambridge printer.  Oxford: Bibliographical Society, 1904.

Hobson, G.D. Blind-stamped panels in the English book-trade, c. 1485-1555. London; Bibliographical Society, 1944

McKitterick, David. A history of the Cambridge University Press. Volume 1. Printing and the book trade in Cambridge, 1534-1698. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, c1992.

Oldham, J. Basil. Blind panels of English binders.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958.

Oldham, J. Basil. English blind-stamped bindings.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952.

Pearson, David. English bookbinding styles 1450-1800: a handbook. London: The British Library & Oak Knoll Press, 2005.

Pryde, Pam.  ‘A recent purchase for Special Collections in the Baillieu Library’, University of Melbourne Collections, Issue 3, December 2008. Accessed 10 March 2017 http://museumsandcollections.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/1378827/pryde.pdf

Sims, Liam. ‘An early Cambridge binding by Nicholas Spierinck’.  Cambridge University Library Special Collections blog post, 3 April 2015. Accessed 10 March 2017 https://specialcollections.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=7461

Venn, John & J.A. Venn.  Alumni Cantabridgienses: a biographical list of all known students, graduates and holders of officeat the University of Cambridge, from the earliest times to 1900.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927.

Weale, W.H. James.  Bookbindings and rubbings of bindings in the Victoria and Albert Museum. London: The Holland Press, 1962.

 

Germaine Greer Meets the Archivists

8 March 2017 (International Women’s Day 2017)
Kathleen Fitzpatrick Lecture Theatre, The University of Melbourne

By Rachel Tropea, Senior Research Archivist, Digital Scholarship (University of Melbourne), and Acting Deputy Archivist, University of Melbourne Archives

Germaine Greer and Katrina Dean at The Mills, 2014. Photo: Nathan Gallagher

‘When people want to talk to me about me, I’m bored’ – Germaine Greer. ‘Once I am gone,  I am yours to reinterpret’. #greerarchive #IWD2017 (the first tweet of the night by Nikki Henningham)

500 people crowded into the Kathleen Fitzpatrick Lecture Theatre, ahead of the 400 people on the waiting list, for Germaine Greer Meets the Archivists – the launch of the Germaine Greer Archive hosted by the University of Melbourne Archives (UMA).  Earlier that day, Greer had arrived from the UK, headed to UMA where she had dropped off  more records and held a ‘pre-match’ with the Greer archival team.  This is an archive still being ‘created’.

To say most of us in the audience were excited is an understatement – we burst into applause, cheering and nearly out of our seats as the official proceedings began.  UMA staff had been preparing for this, and I had been around all day to witness their nerves and excitement.

Members of the audience at Germaine Greer Meets the Archivists, 8 March 2017, Kathleen Fitzpatrick Lecture Theatre, The University of Melbourne

Never before has a collection at UMA generated this much public interest and anticipation. After an introduction by Professor Julie Willis,  the ‘Greer Gang’ Rachel Buchanan (Curator), and archivists Sarah Brown, Kate Hodgetts, Lachlan Glanville, and Millie Weber each spoke, setting the tone for the night and framing the conversation between themselves, the archivists ‘processing’ the collection, and, the first ‘keeper’ of the records (as Greer referred to herself). “We have met many versions of Germaine and now Germaine can meet us” said Rachel Buchanan. They talked particularly of the series they had each painstakingly worked on with deep intelligence, humour and insight to an enthralled audience. It is clearly a labour of love for them.

Germaine Greer, and Christopher [her cat], have gazed down on me from our office noticeboard for the months I have spent with the archives of Professor Greer’s “Major Works”…the series reveals the interweaving of Germaine Greer’s work and her life; constantly working but with the energy and aesthetic to create environments of beauty and practicality in houses in London, rural England, Italy – even in Tulsa, Oklahoma – and returning at last to save a Queensland rainforest at Cave Creek. (Sarah Brown)

Left to right: Kate Hodgetts, Lachlan Glanville, Millie Weber and Sarah Brown at Germaine Greer Meets the Archivists, 8 March 2017, Kathleen Fitspatrick Lecture Theatre, The University of Melbourne

I feel deep admiration and a little jealousy over their efforts in archiving this collection – Kate listened to 150 hours of audio material, Sarah paged through 600 files about Greer’s publications, and Lachlan read 40,000 letters,

many of which are fairly routine…But interspersed are some remarkable items that drop you out of time, such as this playboy reader’s letter. Seeing the trace of a blue collar guy from Philomath Oregon, perhaps reading Playboy in his lunch break at the cannery, picking up the closest piece of paper to hand to share his thoughts on the social-sexual melodrama of male female relations to arch feminist Germaine Greer feels like an extraordinary gift. (Lachlan Granville)

Millie who worked on the Women and Publications series described how “The blank backs of meeting minutes showcase sketches and shopping lists that…are a kind of found poetry”.

Shopping List on the reverse of meeting minutes, c. 1972, Germaine Greer Collection, The University of Melbourne Archives, 2014.0007.00042. Photo: Kate Hodgetts

How often do we as archivists get to ‘read’ each individual item in a collection? I never have. Who has worked directly with the original keeper of the records? Not many of us. And how many people, outside of the profession, wear an archivist’s hat through their career? Greer kept the archive, very consciously from early on, referring to it in recordings:

Over the years Greer has been fully aware that she was building an archive, it was done very much with intention and there is evidence of this throughout the archive itself…At one point in an audio diary Greer gives the date and states on the recording that it will make it ‘easier for whoever gets her paws on this tape’. Being the person with ‘her paws on the tape’ I appreciate that gesture. (Kate Hodgetts)

Later that night, Greer spoke of her motivation for keeping records, as evidence to counter the ‘falsification of real events… but already in an unthinking way, I’d begun to keep things. One of the most interesting things about the second wave of feminism is that it coincided with terrific creativity from young women…they were producing these little fanzines, these little magazines, that were drawn, that were photocopied, that were stapled, and I thought they were amazing’.

Cassettes from the Germaine Greer Collection, The University of Melbourne Archives, 2014.0040 (Audio Series). Photo: Kate Hodgetts

Greer maintains that her archive is ‘a portrait of a time…a lot of the letters that you’ll see in the archive; and to me, it touches my heart that they are entrusting me with this evidence of their feelings and their confusion and their despair very often. I suppose I think in a way that the archive is sacred, that it’s a sacred trust, and so my job was to find people that would take care of it, who would treat it with the gentleness that it deserves’.

And Greer remains consciously involved. The process of collaborating, negotiating, and the dynamics of the relationship between Greer, the Greer Gang, and the UMA Archive with its inbuilt systems and policies are complicated and occasionally fraught. Greer admitted to having mixed feelings handing over this collection, her life’s work; and, working with someone of Greer’s stature while rewarding and stimulating must be daunting at times. We archivists are most often working with the records of ‘dead’ people.

Germaine Greer and Rachel Buchanan at Germaine Greer Meets the Archivists, 8 March 2017, Kathleen Fitzpatrick Lecture Theatre, The University of Melbourne

The Greer Gang shared star-billing with Germaine Greer and they are the inspiration for this post. For those of you who were not there, I am sure you will be delighted and moved by their exceptional speeches, and I encourage you to watch the recording of the night’s proceedings available online at http://events.unimelb.edu.au/recordings/1590-germaine-greer-meets-the-archivists.

I continue to be impressed by the way the Greer Gang and Germaine Greer narrated the story of the records, revering the archival process and in turn the profession, and imbued that into the audience of largely non-archivists. They showed us that the Archive is not a static thing, but rather that it can evolve; that it is not where records go to die, but a place where they can be brought to life:

I look at this wall of boxes and see a mausoleum. Or morgue. Or jail…Everything locked down and sealed off, sanitised…But if I tilt my head sideways, I see a skyscraper tipped on its side. Every box a window into a different room and each room is bursting with life’. (Rachel Buchanan)

Rachel Buchanan described the night on twitter as “an unusual, dynamic, challenging event”. An audience member wrote that it was “the most affirming and most amazing archival experience I have ever had”. The night, the speeches, the experience of this archive from various perspectives, are all part of the fascinating story of these records.

Record of the tweets about the night gathered via the hashtag #greerarchive:


New Holland’s position upon the globe

One of the thought-provoking themes included in the latest exhibition in the Noel Shaw Gallery, Plotting the island: dreams, discovery and disaster, is the Dutch encounter with Australia in the 17th century. The Dutch are viewed as having added the coastline of Australia to the world’s map through their landings on the continent from 1606 until 1644 and their subsequent issuing of printed maps. For example, the world map reissued by Daniel Stopendael shows New Holland’s position on the globe, yet its outline is incomplete and inaccurate and there was and is still much to learn about its bounds and character.

It was the lucrative spice trade that brought the Dutch to establish their (VOC) trading port in Batavia (now Jakarta) and on to Australia, sometimes purposefully, other times by fateful accident. Early landings encountered inhospitable shores and then in 1629 the ship Batavia lost course and was wrecked on the Houtman Abrolhos islands off the coast of Western Australia. The astounding mutiny and massacre that transpired amongst the survivors is a grisly chapter of Australian history. [1.] Melchisédech Thévenot’s book, Relations de divers voyages curieux … (Account of diverse and curious voyages) (1663-1672), compiles many travel stories, including the harrowing shipwreck of Batavia. It also features an important map of New Holland showing its outline as it was understood in 1644. Sections of this coastline, which incorporates Tasmania and New Zealand, were charted by Abel Tasman (1603-1659) during two separate voyages in 1642 and 1644. This map was published in three states (versions) and the Baillieu’s copy has the addition of a wind rose at right. [2.] As Martin Woods notes in the exhibition catalogue, this map has dual Dutch and French labels, with the unexplored section headed Terra Australis suggesting the way forward for French navigational ambitions. [3.] Yet to the French of the 17th century the South Land was also ‘Gonneville Land’, a utopia of gold.

Tasman was commissioned by Anthony Van Diemen, Governor-General of the Dutch East India Company, to explore the Great South Land. The combination of Van Diemen’s death in 1645, savage coasts and unpromising trade prospects saw the Dutch abandon New Holland, and it was not until the 18th century that exploration to the South Land was again continued by the English and the French. Thévenot’s book was a model which inspired Enlightenment writers who followed in the 18th century.

The set of Dutch books De mensch, zoo als hij voorkomt op den bekenden aardbol (Man as he appears on the familiar globe) (1802) is an example produced from Enlightenment ideals. It brings together information from many published sources, with order and classification. It is a book of anthropological geography based on voyages of exploration, locating its subjects in the paradigm of the Noble Savage. Its illustrator Jacques Kuyper (1761–1808) was a director of Amsterdam’s drawing academy and his artistic style was Neoclassical, a hallmark of the Enlightenment. The images are regarded by scholars as derivative to the voyages as they were made in response to them rather than from direct experience, nevertheless they offer rich waters for researchers, particularly so as the Baillieu Library holds the majority of the preparatory drawings for the book, in which can be seen additional information such as inscriptions and differences between the planned images and the printed versions.

The image Niew-Hollanders [3.] is featured in volume three; this text and image draws heavily from the published accounts of Cook and Sydney Parkinson. The position of the image in the third volume is rather unusual as the preceding volume contains South Sea Islanders and includes New Zealanders and Van Diemen Landers (Tasmanians). A result is that Tasmania and mainland Australia have been separated; additionally New Hollanders have been grouped with first-nation peoples of North America including such distant locales as Alaska. It calls to mind those early Dutch experiences with the South Land and the three distinct landmasses and peoples they briefly encountered; at that moment in history Europeans could not have had a well-developed understanding of the relationships and individual complexities of these lands and peoples.

Australia straddles two oceans: the Indian and the Pacific. Each of these regions has quite distinctive environments and customs. So, does it belong with the islands of the East Indies, or the Pacific, or, as it has sometimes been perceived, as an extension of the Americas? While Australia’s coastlines became more defined, its identity is not so readily classified and its position on the globe more than merely its longitude and latitude. For its Indigenous people, and for different citizens of the world, Australia each has different meaning.

Kerrianne Stone (Curator, Prints)

References and further reading

[1.] See the full account in Mike Dash, Batavia’s graveyard, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002
[2.] Robert Clancy, The mapping of Terra Australis, Macquarie Park, N.S.W.: Universal Press, 1995 p. 82
[3.] Martin Woods, ‘New Holland dreams and misgivings’ in Plotting the island: dreams, discovery and disaster, University of Melbourne, 2017, p. 28
[4.] The much needed conservation of this drawing was funded by Miegunyah.

Women’s Liberation and Feminist Sources at UMA

Sue Fairbanks, Acting University Archivist

Women's Liberation: March on March
Women’s Liberation: March on March. Folders 1 & 3, Victorian Women’s Liberation and Lesbian Feminist Archives Collection 2010.0011, University of Melbourne Archives.

When Germaine Greer visited Australia in 1971 to see her family and promote the paperback edition of The Female Eunuch, the Australian women’s movement was gearing up for one of its most important interventions in Australian politics. The Women’s Electoral Lobby, convened by Beatrice Faust, was formed to survey all candidates in the December 1972 Federal election on issues of interest to women, and to produce a form guide for voters. The election was won by the Labor Party under Gough Whitlam with its platform of progressive reform.

Papers from WEL in Victoria were the first from the second wave of Australian feminism deposited in the University of Melbourne Archives in 1974. They were followed by records from the Women’s Liberation Movement, Working Women’s Centre, Abortion Law Reform Association and from women involved in the fight for institutional equality and legal reform:  Zelda D’Aprano, Jan Harper, Alva Geikie, Dulcie Bethune, Alma Morton and Joyce Nicholson.

'Lesbians are everywhere' by the Australian Union of Students
“Lesbians are Everywhere”, produced by the Australian Union of Students Media for the Lesbian Political Action Group, c1970s. Women’s Liberation Switchboard, reference no. 2000.0163, Victorian Women’s Liberation and Lesbian Feminist Archives No. 17, listed in VWLLFA Poster Collection, 2010.0011, University of Melbourne Archives.

Not all women’s liberationists were beating a path to UMA’s door however. In 1982 a women’s liberation reading group was formed to study the movement’s history but members soon realised that documents were disappearing and that a concerted effort was needed to protect and archive them. The Women’s Liberation Archives had its first meeting on 1 March 1983 and met regularly for the next ten years while collecting, preserving and making material available for research. Its premises moved several times until the 1992 closure of the Women’s Liberation Building in Fitzroy meant the Archive was relocated to a private home. It was renamed the Women’s Liberation and Lesbian Archives to acknowledge the participation of lesbian feminists and separatist feminists in the women’s movement.

In 2000, a new collective was formed to find a permanent home for the Women’s Liberation and Lesbian Archives, and it registered as the Victorian Women’s Liberation and Lesbian Feminist Archives Inc. (VWLLFA). After exploring the options, a mutual decision was made to move the collection to the UMA.

From UMA’s point of view, the acquisition of the initial 126 collections making up the VWLLFA more than doubled, and significantly broadened, our holdings on the women’s movement. It increased the number of collections from women’s liberation organisations such as the Women’s Liberation Switchboard and the Women’s Liberation Centre. Uniquely, the acquisition provided an insight into lesbian feminist and separatist politics and their rich community life in Melbourne and Victoria. Lesbian publications such as Labrys, Lesbiana and Lesbian News joined Melbourne Women’s Liberation Newsletter and Vashti’s Voice on the Archives’ shelves. Collections such as the Lesbian and Women’s Community Theatre papers and the Performing Older Women’s Circus scripts join the records of more fundamental concerns such as the Matrix Guild addressing the issues facing older lesbians, particularly in the areas of health and housing, and the records of women’s refuges.

UMA has continued to collect records from the women’s movement in our own right as well as with the VWLLFA, and has developed several strengths intertwined with those discussed already. Women and publishing and women’s movement memorabilia are just two examples.

Women's Liberation, printed by Comment Publishing, c1970s
“Women’s Liberation, Come, March, March Eleventh” printed by Comment Publishing, Sydney, c1970s. Sue Jackson, collection 2000.0199, University of Melbourne Archives.

The UMA holds the records of McPhee Gribble Pty Ltd, a major publishing company run by Hilary McPhee and Diana Gribble from 1975 to 1989, as well as of the feminist publishing venture, Sisters Publishing Ltd, from 1979 to 1984. Sugar & Snails Press began life as the Women’s Movement Children’s’ Literature Co-operative Ltd in 1974 by women who were concerned about sexism in children’s literature and began to publish and write their own books. Lesbian feminist publishing is represented by the Lesbian Newsletter and its successors already mentioned. UMA also holds the papers of Susan Hawthorne and Renate Klein, publishers of Spinifex Press; and of the 6th International Feminist Book Fair held in Melbourne in 1994.

The VWLLFA collected and transferred to UMA a vast number of posters from women’s movement events from the 1970s on; as well as related t-shirts, banners and photographs. Collections of women’s alternative music on vinyl recordings are also held, although they are not yet available for access.

Finally, the union and labour movement records held at UMA document the long history of the struggle for the rights of women as workers. They include company and union records on the 1907 family wage decision, the many campaigns for equal pay, the establishment of female-only unions and many other industrial campaigns and issues.

The feminist holdings of UMA doubled again with the acquisition of the papers of Germaine Greer in 2014, making the UMA one of the larger Australian holders of second wave feminist and lesbian feminist archives alongside:

And international archives:

Delius Buys a Gauguin

Delius, Jelka (1868-1935), Nevermore, Object 1, painting,(n.d),Grainger Museum Collection, University of Melbourne.

Here at the Grainger Museum we have a copy of Paul Gauguin’s Nevermore currently on show painted by Jelka Delius (nee Rosen), the wife of composer Frederick Delius. Following my curiosity at the provenance of this painting, I conducted a quick Google search and discovered an article that opened the horizon for just how peculiar this painting is. In his article, “Delius Buys A Gauguin” Stephen J. Bury, Chief Librarian at the Frick Collection in New York, succinctly outlines the narrative of a succession of paintings that reproduce Gauguin’s Nevermore and their place in the social life of Frederick and Jelka Delius. In doing so, Bury asks two questions that I was happy to realise that the Grainger Museum’s collection can help to resolve. After emailing Bury and providing him with some more details—although still partially incomplete—I decided to write some additional comments here.

In the portion of the article below, Bury gives the account of his inquiry into a painting closely related to Nevermore; a late-impressionist portrait of Frederick Delius believed to be painted by Jelka Delius. The portrait that Bury recalled from memory pictures Nevermore (or a copy) as a part of its domestic mise-en-scene—it frames Delius’ right shoulder, creating an oblique harmony of perspectives that gives the slight impression that Nevermore could be a window to a distant room; it aligns Pahura—Gauguin’s vahiné (Tahitian wife) as languidly resting within the nape of Delius’ neck (in an ease possibly in contest with the moody tension of Gauguin’s original). As discovered by Bury, the painting that he recalled was not in-fact the original presumed to be painted by Jelka, but a reproduction now held in the public collection of the United Kingdom. In his words:

“So it’s 1948 copy after Jelka Rosen, by Alexander Akerbladh (1886–1958). Jelka Rosen studied art from 1892 at the Académie Colarossi. I looked her up in the Library’s Paris Salons catalogues, where she appears in the 1894 and 1895 volume:  in 1894 she is described as a pupil of Gustave Courtois, with a contact address at Rue Campagne-Premiere, 9 and exhibiting (at?what?) Au bord de l’eau; in 1895 she has the address, Avenue du Maine, 23 and she exhibited De grand matin and En plein été. Both addresses were in Montparnasse, a fertile meeting ground of artists and musicians. Delius and Rosen met at a dinner party on January 16, 1896, and a few years later they moved to Grez-sur-Loing, and married in September 1903.”[1]

My next question was whether in the background of the Delius portrait it was an actual Gauguin or a copy — perhaps, by Jelka. The painting is easily identifiable as Nevermore (1897), which is in the Courtauld Collection in London. The online catalogue reveals that, indeed, Delius was the first owner. I could also have found this out using the Frick Art Reference Library Photoarchive provenance information that sits alongside the photographs of the painting, or the 1954 printed Courtauld Collection catalogue by Douglas Cooper. The printed catalogue gives more details than the online one on how Delius might have become interested in Gauguin’s work. Delius knew the composer William Molard, who had lived in the same house as Gauguin, Rue Vercingéterix, 4, 1893–94 and Gauguin had painted a portrait of Molard (it’s on the back of a self-portrait in the Musée d’Orsay, dated 1893–94). And Gauguin was involved with Molard’s adolescent stepdaughter, Judith Gérard/Molard, the daughter of Ida Ericson, the Swedish sculptress. So Delius would have definitely have met Gauguin.

Nevermore was bought by Delius for 500 Francs (another 50 was spent on a frame) from Gauguin’s friend, correspondent and dealer, the painter Daniel de Monfreid (1856–1929) in 1898. In a letter dated 12 January 1899 from Papeete, Gauguin wrote to de Monfreid that he had done well to sell the painting to Delius: “Do you recall that you reproached me for giving this painting a title: don’t you believe that this title Nevermore was the reason for the purchase…Maybe!…I’m delighted Delius is the owner, meaning that it’s a purchase not for speculation and resale, but for pleasure…” [my translation from Lettres de Gauguin a Daniel Monfreid (Paris, 1950)]

It hung in Delius’ music room in Grez-sur-Loing, where we see it in the Rosen/Akerbladh portrait. The subsequent history is uncertain: the catalogue to the 1906 Gauguin section of the Salon d’Automne has Delius as the lender. This was the show that both Picasso and Matisse saw. It was probably sold during financial problems that plagued Delius in the 1910s. It went through the hands of three dealers – Alfred Wolff (Munich), Alex Reid (Glasgow) and Agnew (London and Manchester) before entering Herbert Coleman’s collection in Manchester. It was in Samuel Courtauld’s Collection by 1926, becoming part of the Courtauld Gift in 1932.

What effect Nevermore, with its overtones of Edgar Allan Poe, had on the work of Delius during the period he owned it is a tantalizing subject to explore. Meanwhile I need to track down where the original Jelka Rosen portrait is.

To respond to Bury’s Questions: firstly, here at the Grainger museum we have the original portrait Frederick Delius (1925) that was subsequently reproduced by Akerbladh, and as mentioned, we also have the copy of Gauguin’s Nevermore (Nevermore, no date) painted by Jelka Delius. Knowing that Jelka did indeed paint her reproduction of Nevermore, we can propose that the Nevermore pictured in the background of the Delius portrait may well be the copy that Bury guessed to be painted by Jelka, making it dubious to whether the portrait can be considered stable evidence the Delius’ ownership of Nevermore at the time of the portrait. To speculate on the effect of Nevermore on Delius—and therefore its continued presence in these paintings—we might look to Grainger’s account:

“Delius had sold the original painting [Nevermore] in 1898… We should remember how many of Delius’s greatest creations were inspired by thoughts of primitive nature:… It was this urge to express in art the mood of virgin nature, the spirit of wild races, that drew Delius and me so closely together.”

Such remarks are indicative of Grainger’s tone and style—an autodidact abundant with candour. They denote his ideal for an art comparative with nature (a Romantic Modernism, sketchily reminiscent of Rousseau), coexistent with a flimsy theory of racial identity not uncommon in certain intellectual circles at the time. One presumes that the appearance of Pahura in all of these paintings serve an iconographic purpose, expressing the quasi-Romantic ideals shared by these two composers. Whether or not we argue that Gauguin’s relationship to Tahitian culture was authentic, the reception of the painting by Grainger and Delius is indicative of the type of fetishism du jour for Western modernists (and very much in accord with Grainger’s broader interests). Without going into the deeper analysis needed for this theme, I might add that engaging with these subjects is very much a part of the complexities faced when engaging Grainger’s collection today. Some may have the reservation that this is in contest with Grainger’s aims for the museum, yet one duty of the collection is to be interpreted and to help bring history into dialogue with the present. This is the challenge that anachronism presents to the relevance of any museum.

By looking to Percy Grainger’s aims for his museum[2, it is certain that there is a desire to build an educational institution for students of music and composition expressly on his own terms. In the service of this cause, he collected items in aid of rewriting and revaluing the history of the Western tradition in an idiosyncratic and frankly personal manner; paintings such as Nevermore and the portrait of Delius, clothing, correspondence, instruments, photographs, and all nature of ephemera illustrate and support Grainger’s ideas about history. More interestingly, in an example rare for any museum, Grainger originally wrote, composed, and built all of the information panels by hand. The institutional acknowledgement of mentors and friends provide much of the contour for Grainger’s narration of history, and it is within these crafted accounts that Grainger wished to canonise Frederick Delius. Adjacent to this, we might observe that part of the cadence of autobiography is bias such as this, and although the ethics of Grainger’s history is by no means sound by most standards, the earnestness of his example provides a clear image of how museums institute value on historical narratives, social relations, and certain effects of private property. As a most basic fact, these paintings give shape to the outward appearance of an amicable relationship between the Delius and Grainger families, now public, historical, institutionalised and in the broadest sense of the term, preserved. But they have more to say than biography, and this is where we must depart on our own interpretations.

[1] Bury S. Delius Buys A Gauguin. Chief Librarian’s Blog, The Frick Collection. Retrieved from http://www.frick.org/blogs/chief_librarian/delius_buys_gauguin

[2] For instance, in these aims Grainger explicitly references the privileging of his social circle:

“I have tried in this Museum to trace as best I can the aesthetic indebtedness of composers to each other (the borrowing of musical themes or novel compositional techniques) and to the culturizing influence of parents, relatives, wives, husbands and friends (for instance, Cyril Scott’s inspiring encouragement of several British composers of his generation; Jelka Delius’s contributions to her husband’s artistic life; Balfour Gardiner’s championship of 20th century British music).”

Grainger Museum display legend: The aims of the Grainger Museum

 

Nicholas Tammens,

Client Services Officer

Grainger Museum

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