In the early modern period Europeans were fascinated by the dark colour of African skin. Although this does not show in sixteenth-century prints where skin colour was not usually indicated, this would change in the first decade of the seventeenth century in the wall maps of Willem Jansz. Blaeu. Drawing on developments in printing techniques, changes in artistic fashion, contemporary ideas about scientific illustrations, developments in map making, and the business of book publishing, this article traces the origin of the convention to depict blacks without reference to their skin colour and examines the reasons for its success and demise. It also charts and explains the new model and addresses the different pace in which this convention changed in travel books and wall maps.

This article examines contemporary artistic representations of territoriality and migration. The rise in surveillance of undocumented migrants in the post-9/11 United States produces mechanisms of invisibility and redeploys the border as a movable center of power. I trace this geopolitical shift in territorial representation through the work of Ecuadoran American artist Sandra C. Fernandez, whose print Coming of Age (Transformations) (2008) stages the city of Austin, Texas, as an expanding American metropolis, attracting immigrants in search of work, but insistent on obscuring their presence. Made at the Austin-based workshop Coronado Studio, Coming of Age dialogues with the work of fellow resident artists Ester Hernandez and Tony Ortega, who share an interest in migration and trade liberalization. But in contrast, Fernandez offers a vivid example of the reterritorialization of the nation’s borders, and further connects these notions of territory to historical forms of racial oppression.

Notwithstanding the relaxation of French censorship laws after the July Revolution, Honoré Daumier (1809–78) was condemned, in 1832, to a six-month prison term for the publication of the caricature Gargantua, portraying King Louis-Philippe (1773–1850) as Rabelais’s gluttonous giant. On November 11, 1832, after two and a half months in the prison of Sainte-Pélagie, he was transferred for eleven weeks to Dr. J. P. Casimir Pinel’s (1800–66) mental hospital at rue Chaillot. There, far removed from the overcrowded and unhygienic prison, he labored on a series of drawings and watercolors titled L’Imagination, until his release on February 22, 1833. The young printmaker Charles Ramelet (1805–51) made lithographs after Daumier’s sketches, and these started to appear in the press even before the artist had completed his sentence. The first print, published on January 14, 1833 in the new illustrated daily newspaper Le Charivari, depicted an old women daydreaming about inexhaustible wealth. It was accompanied by a short explanation by the editor Charles Philipon (1800–61), Daumier’s publisher, friend, and colleague, stating that the series sought to investigate “diabolic actions, castles in Spain, projects, desires, fixed ideas, and all the chimeras of the imagination.”

Goupil & Cie, originally established as Rittner & Goupil in Paris in 1829, was one of the most prominent print and art dealers of the nineteenth century. Initially, the activities of the firm consisted of reproducing, publishing, and selling prints in Paris. Later, the directors diversified to also deal in original artworks. Goupil’s operations coincided with a turning point in the history of art, which marked the shift from traditional patronage of the arts—church, royalty, aristocracy, and state—to a market system made possible by an increasingly rich and powerful bourgeoisie. Goupil was one of the first dealers to engage in such a system, which in turn facilitated its ambitions of internationalization. After expanding first to London in 1842, the firm opened a New York branch in 1848 as Goupil & Co. and went on to develop an extensive network of branches and partnerships across Europe, the United States, the Ottoman Empire, and as far as Australia. While international expansion had a number of advantages—including higher growth potential by accessing a larger pool of clients—uncertain economic outlook, as well as cultural and regulatory differences, created a challenging scenario. Using Goupil’s New York branch as a case study, this article will investigate the strategy Goupil & Cie and its associates implemented to successfully balance the perks and perils of operating a business remotely.

As an addition to the numerous articles by DeCourcy E. McIntosh, which revealed for the first time the influence of the French dealer on the American market, this paper will explore in detail the obstacles to, and uncertainties in, creating and keeping a presence in the art market across the Atlantic in the mid-nineteenth century. Since 2012, with the acquisition by the Getty Research Institute of the archival material of the Knoedler Gallery, successors of Goupil & Co. in New York in 1857, it has now become possible to also reconsider some aspects of a business relationship that dominated the market for European art in America for half a century and secured the legacy of Goupil in this country.

Taking as its focus the international modern phenomenon of artistic organization in the nineteenth century, this essay examines the first printmaking group in Russia – the Society of Russian Etchers. Analysing the foundation and published output of the society, it explores the reasons why a group of painters turned to etching in the 1870s, and how this technique enabled them to foster a novel sense of identity in the Russian art world.

The esteem in which Giorgio Vasari held prints and engravers has been hotly debated in recent criticism. In 1990, Evelina Borea suggested that the author of the Lives was basically interested in prints only with regard to the authors of the inventions and not to their material execution, and this theory has been embraced both by David Landau and Robert Getscher. More recently, Sharon Gregory has attempted to tone down this highly critical stance, arguing that in the life of Marcantonio Raimondi 'and other engravers of prints' inserted ex novo into the edition of 1568, which offers a genuine history of the art from Maso Finiguerra to Maarten van Heemskerck, Vasari focused on the artist who made the engravings and not on the inventor of those prints, acknowledging the status of the various Agostino Veneziano, Jacopo Caraglio and Enea Vico (among many others) as individual artists with a specific and recognizable style.

The aim of this article is to analyze this issue in greater depth, addressing it from the point of view of the history of connoisseurship: was Vasari the connoisseur interested in establishing who was responsible for the invention of the prints or their engraving, or perhaps of both?

American printmaker Joseph Pennell’s iconic New York imagery is the focus of this article, including an exploration of his efforts to find an appropriate aesthetic language for Manhattan’s unparalleled new skyscrapers in light of his experience as a transatlantic artist.

The Reformation brought about an iconoclastic movement as a result of which cult images in the churches were removed and destroyed. Studying the Bible and preaching the word of God were the ways in which the new protestant faith was proclaimed. Nevertheless images, notably prints, continued to play a role throughout Europe, though exclusively at a didactic level. In the Netherlands, unlike the rest of Europe – mainly under the influence of prominent theologians of those days such as Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676) – there were at first many objections to the use of visual arts. This changed in the course of time. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, a flourishing period arose for Dutch Bible illustrations. The famous Dutch printmaker Romeyn de Hooghe produced two series of the Bible prints, one devoted to the Old and one to the New Testament. These two series of prints were each preceded by title prints. These title prints and the explanatory texts accompanying them reveal a great deal about the use of prints in studying the Bible.