Canaday Library Color Card Links Baxter/Le Blond Print Scholars Internationally
By Carol W. Campbell

In the customary sharing of information about items in College's Collections with College community users and off campus scholars, there are often benefits in the fine-tuning of the object records. Occasionally there is a major expansion of relevant data, which lifts dialogue into a fresh realm. Such was the recent inquiry regarding a colour post card issued by Canaday Library for the Rare Book Room exhibition, "The Age of Victoria," in 1986. In November 1999 the College postal, "Her Majesty at Balmoral", was brought to the attention of William H. Scheuerle, Professor of English and Dean Emeritus, at the University of South Florida in Tampa, by a friend in the Florida Bibliophile Society. The card's caption attributed the scene to George Baxter (1804-1867) whose lively colour oil print engravings, patented in 1835, and available as facsimiles of famous paintings and exuberant Victorian life by the mid-nineteenth century, were in lively competition with the black and white illustrative engraving of the period.

The "Baxter process" started with the standard engraved plate with scene details but each colour or tint was added individually on Baxter's hand press, with the use of sometimes twenty to thirty additional metal or wood blocks. A rich thick colour print with glossy surface was the result. Baxter prints introduced the middle class to "good pictures" accessible as book illustration or as a mounted picture on the wall, and expressing the family and nationalistic values of the day. Being a fan and collector of Baxter prints, and writer of an article on Baxter in Biblio magazine, October 1998, Prof. Scheuerle, was able to inform us that "although the subject material and process were Baxter's, the image was done by Abraham Le Blond (1819-1894) who was a Baxter licensee and who used many of Baxter's blocks and his printing process, and who is admired for his own work."

The College postal had been published at same time as a greeting card, "Her Majesty at Windsor", captioned as by George Baxter, but also byLe Blond. Both items are part of an extensive Baxter print series (66 items) within the Mary E. Harrington Print Collection, given by bequest of Philadelphia printmaker Richard E. Bishop in 1975. The incoming collection list had attributed all images to Baxter, even though the Collections Office detailed cataloging of 1985 used the trusted catalog of Baxter prints by Ball and Martin. The markings and inscriptions on each print had been noted, including characteristic Baxter blind stamps and red embossed stamps. Some were by licensees or anonymous, but the generic Baxter was chosen for the card caption. Most importantly, the inquiry by Prof. Scheuerle added two references to the study, a Le Blond booklet by The New Baxter Society (April 1997) and a publication in 1977 on Le Blond's works by P. Lycett and M. Martin.

A check-list of Baxter/Le Blond print holdings was sent to Prof. Scheuerle. With his expertise, he was able to verify that fifty-seven of the sixty-six prints were by Baxter himself, eight were by Le Blond, and one was a rarely seen print, illustrated here. This print is a series of twelve "Needlebox" prints, each image being 1 in. x 1 13/16 in, by George Baxter Jnr., who was active in Birmingham, England, between 1871 -1882, but not otherwise included in the standard catalogs. The subjects relate in part to some of the themes familiar in the Baxter repertoire: hunting and racing scenes, wedding scene (probably Victoria and Albert), peasants in landscape, rural scenes, Indian exotic scene, still lifes, royal figures, and the Crystal Palace. Baxter also was known for children and animals, religious events, and scenes such as the Ascent of Mount Blanc, for which Bryn Mawr has three versions. What were very modest in price and which failed to keep Baxter from bankruptcy in 1865 are now treasured. His time-consuming process was superseded in the second half of the nineteenth century by chromolithography.

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