HISTORICAL PRINTS AND ORIGINAL ART

Here are some of our historical prints and original art,

listed chronologically, available for purchase:

An Early Kellogg Print

J. P. Butts. Saratoga Springs [New York] (Hartford: D. W. Kellogg, 1830s) Hand-colored lithograph. 10.25” x 13.25”. Backed with acid-free paper. VG, with restoration of the margins. $400

When this view was produced, Saratoga Springs was almost as new as was the firm that produced the print. Established in 1819, the village was incorporated in 1826. This view was most certainly drawn within ten years of that date. Perhaps it was executed in 1832 to celebrate the inauguration of rail service on the Saratoga and Schenectady Railroad. D. W. Kellogg’s firm purportedly dates from 1830, but no one actually knows the date of his first lithograph. This print bears all of the characteristics of Kellogg’s earliest work: relatively small size, relatively simple composition, and minimal indicia. We think this is the first separately published view of the town. 

E. W. Clay. New Edition of MacBeth. Bank-Oh’s! Ghost. (New York: H. R. Robinson, 1837) Lithograph. 10.5” x 17.25”. VG, foxing. Trimmed. Mounted on card stock. $2,000

This is one of several spirited satires issued by the Clay-Robinson team on the Panic of 1837, condemning Van Buren and Jackson’s hard-money policies as the source of the crisis. Clay shows the president haunted by the ghost of Commerce, which is seated at the far right end of a table which he shares with a southern planter (far left) and a New York City Tammany Democrat. Commerce has been strangled by the Specie Circular, an extremely unpopular order issued by the Jackson administration in December 1836, requiring collectors of public revenues to accept only gold or silver (i.e., “specie”) in payment for public lands. The ghost displays a sheaf of papers, including one marked “Repeal of the Specie Circular,” and notices of bank failures in New Orleans, Philadelphia, and New York. Van Buren recoils at the sight of the specter, exclaiming, “Never shake thy gory locks at me, thou can’st not say I did it.” Jackson, in a bonnet and dress made of bunting, turns away saying, “Never mind him gentlemen, the creature’s scared, and has some conscience left; but by the Eternal we must shake that out of him.”  Worldcat locates only four public holdings.

A Peep into Futurity, or, A Picture of 1841. (New York: H. R. Robinson, 1838)  Lithograph. 10.5” x 18.5’. Near fine. Small “microfilmed” stamp to lower right corner. $1,500

Whig publisher Henry Robinson published this cartoon in 1838 (I think it is in his hand, but that’s just an educated guess}. It shows Whig leader Henry Clay predicting bleak futures for Democratic party leaders ex-President Jackson, Senator Benton of Missouri, and President Van Buren. It wasn’t as dire as Clay hoped, but he was correct that Van Buren would lose his campaign for re-election. It is curious that Clay’s predictions did not include his installation as President. This was Clay’s (and Robinson’s) most fervent wish for more than two decades. 

Pre-Civil War Views of New England Towns

John B. Bachelder (1825-1894), well known for his historical images of the Civil War, was also a fine landscape painter. He made his drawings on-the-spot, usually from an elevated vantage point just outside of the towns. Bachelder was concerned to present as accurate a picture of his subjects as was possible and his images are both precise and detailed. In 1856, he published a portfolio of twenty-two views of New England towns. The set is almost impossible to come by, so the images are usually found individually. Periodyssey offers the following two views:

Pittsfield, N. H. South View. (New York: Endicott & Co., 1856). Hand-colored lithograph. Image: 10” x 15.75” Frame: 15.5” x 20”. VG+, bright coloring. Tide line to lower right margin. $400

Salem, Mass. South View. (New York: Endicott & Co., 1856). Hand colored lithograph. Image: 10” x 15.75” Frame: 15” x 19.25”. VG, bright coloring. Long light crease running diagonally across sky to right. Two repaired tears to title bar. $400

Leopold Grozelier. Heralds of Freedom. Truth, Love, Justice. (Boston: C.H. Brainard, 1857). Tinted lithograph. 22” x 18”. VG, soiling to margins, paper weakness around the word “Truth.” $2,000

This beautiful and rare broadside unapologetically celebrates the White male leaders of the 1850s abolitionist movement. It could only have been published in Boston, since New York and Philadelphia printers would not have undertaken so bold a project. The broadside features bust-length portraits of abolitionist leaders William Lloyd Garrison, at the center, his proteges Wendell Phillips to the left and Samuel May below, philosopher/theologians Ralph Waldo Emerson (top) and Theodore Parker (bottom), and politicians Joshua Reed Giddings and Gerrit Smith to either side. Worldcat locates only one copy, at the Boston Athenaeum. 

Champions of Freedom: Free speech, free press, free soil, free men. (Hartford: E. B. & E. C. Kellogg & Co., 1857). Hand-colored Lithograph. 13” x 9.5”. Original margins trimmed off. Mounted on archival paper. Clean and colorful. $800

This rare lithograph (the only institutional copy is at the American Antiquarian Society) celebrates the anti-slavery work of four men:  editor Horace Greeley, Senator Charles Sumner, poet John G. Whittier, and Senator William H. Seward. At first, this seems a bit odd. The print’s caption, after all, was the rallying cry just a year earlier for the candidacy of Republican candidate John C. Fremont. Why wasn’t he included? Perhaps his ignominious defeat dissuaded the Kelloggs from including him here. But what of the two most obvious candidates for anti-slavery honors: William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass? That’s perhaps easier to answer: Garrison was too radical and Douglass was too radical and Black. Neither of their visages would have enhanced the commercial prospects of the print. So the Kelloggs, while showing their New England liberal sentiments, chose a safer route, putting the firm at little risk of being tarnished with the brush of extremism. Though not the incendiary print it might have been, Champions of Freedom is, nonetheless, a beautiful visual in the antebellum fight against slavery.

A Handsome Factory View

Forest River White and Sheet Lead Works. Salem, Massachusetts. (Boston: F. F. Oakley’s Lith., ca. 1860) Hand-colored lithograph. 18” x 28”. VG, with a light crescent tideline to lower right corner and a 1” tear to upper left margin. $1,200

The Forest River Lead Company was incorporated in the 1840s and lasted into the 20th century. The quality of its products was regarded as among the best to be found. This print shows a view of the factory buildings from the river, with the rolling countryside in the background. Several employees are depicted on the company docks and a locomotive labeled, “Forest River,” is seen to the extreme left. Two sailboats and a dingy navigate the river. Found in three institutions. Clements Library and the American Antiquarian Society have this version of the print. The Library of Congress has a variant that features the company’s insignia suspended in the sky.

[Louis Maurer]. The Political Gymnasium. (New York: Currier & Ives, 1860). Lithograph. 13” x 17”. VG, several closed tears, soiling especially to margins. Trimmed.  $2,500

This non-partisan Currier & Ives 1860 campaign cartoon features all of the presidential candidates and their supporters in the 1860 campaign joining in the spirit of the newly popular gymnasium movement. At the far left stands Constitutional Union party vice presidential candidate Edward Everett, as a muscle man holding aloft a barbell on which rests running mate John Bell. Though holding second place on the ticket, the former senator from Massachusetts Everett was much more popular in the Northeast than Tennessean Bell. To the right of Bell and Everett is “Tribune” editor Horace Greeley. His political ambitions are mocked by the artist who shows him vainly attempting to climb up on a horizontal bar labeled “Nomination for Governor.” Abraham Lincoln (center), who has successfully mounted a balance beam constructed of wooden rails, advises Greeley, “You must do as I did Greely, get somebody to give you a boost, I’m sure I never could have got up here by my own efforts.” His cross bar, labeled “For President,” represents the Republican nomination, which Lincoln won largely through Greeley’s powerful support. At far right stands Lincoln’s former competitor for the Republican nomination, William H. Seward, on crutches and with bandaged feet. He warns Lincoln, “You’d better be careful friend, that you don’t tumble off; as I did before I was fairly on, for if you do you’ll be as badly crippled as I am.” Near Seward the two sectional Democratic candidates compete in a boxing match. Stephen A. Douglas, the regular Democratic nominee, faces southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge. Douglas taunts his opponent, “Come at me Breck, and after you cry enough, I’ll take a round with the rest of them.” In response Breckinridge asserts, “If I can do nothing else I can at least prevent you from pulling Lincoln down.” This great cartoon fairly and economically summarizes the political landscape of the 1860 presidential campaign. 

Lincoln in Life

E.C. Middleton. [Abraham Lincoln] (Cincinnati: E. C. Middleton, 1864) Frame: 18″ x 23″. Revealed image: 16″ x 12″. Chromolithograph on canvas double matted in period frame in fine condition with Middleton’s publisher’s blurb printed on reverse. $1,000

Historian Chris Lane writes: Elijah C. Middleton is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of chromolithography in America. Establishing his engraving firm in Cincinnati at mid-nineteenth-century, Middleton’s business benefited from the city’s prime location along routes of westward migration. Middleton and his partner, W.R. Wallace, ventured from engraving into chromolithography and produced the oldest surviving chromolithograph from Cincinnati (an 1852 certificate for a Cincinnati fire company). Middleton struck out on his own in 1861 as a “Portrait Publisher,” advertising his own gallery of printed portraits made with “warranted oil-colors.” His finely-rendered portrait of George Washington became an early icon in the world of chromolithography and gained attention as far away as Philadelphia, where lithography giant P.S. Duval commented on Middleton as a competitor. Desiring an accurate representation of Abraham Lincoln, Middleton actually solicited the President’s advice, sending a proof copy of the print and receiving in return a letter from Lincoln with both compliment and critique. The resulting portrait is the only instance in which Lincoln is known to have advised the artist for one of his portraits.

Alphonse Bigot. T. Sinclair & Co./Lithographers/Philadelphia. Chromolithograph. Image: 15 “ x 12”. Frame: 26” x 21.75. c. 1865. VG, on card stock, closely trimmed, not precisely square. $3,000

Thomas Sinclair is generally regarded as the greatest 19th century Philadelphia lithographer. A Scottish immigrant, he established his own firm in 1839 and dominated the field in his chosen city for four decades. This beautiful placard, probably printed in the 1860s when the firm was located at 311 Chestnut Street, features a central image of Senefelder at his drawing table, surrounded by three women representing the arts and sciences, and framed in Corinthian pillars and an elaborately decorated arch.. It was produced in several sizes. The Jay Last collection owns it as an 11” x 6” so-called business card (at that size we would identify it as a handbill). This version, probably the largest made, was intended for window display.  We cannot find any sale or auction records for this placard. A great rarity.

The Great Ocean Yacht Race: Between the Henrietta, Fleetwing & Vesta: Decr. 11th 1866. (New York: Currier and Ives, 1867) Chromolithograph. Large folio.  Image: 17.75 x 28″ Frame: 29.75” x 39.25”. Near fine. Beautiful. $2,000

This spectacular print by the great Charles Parson (1821-1910) records the beginning of the 1867 transatlantic yacht race prompted by a $30,000 wager. The yachts Henrietta, Fleetwing, and Vesta left New York December 11 for the Needles, Isle of Wight.  The Henrietta finished first having traveled 3,105 nautical miles. The Fleetwing came in distant second and the Vesta a close third. The unbelievably long full title reads “The Great Ocean Yacht Race: Between the Henrietta, Fleetwing & Vesta: The “Good Bye” to the Yacht Club Steamer “River Queen,” 4 Miles East of Sandy Hook, Light Ship, Decr. 11th 1866. The Henrietta arrived off the Needles, Isle of Wight, England at 5:45, P.M. Decr. 25th 1866, winning the race and making the run in 13 days 22 hours, mean time. The Fleetwing arrived 8 hours afterwards, and the Vista 1 1/2 hours after the Fleetwing.” There are two versions of this print: one a two-stone hand-colored lithograph  and this version printed in color. Impressive.

An Unrecorded Window Placard Touting the Velocipede

The Celebrated Parisian Velocipede Manufactured by John Ashcroft New York. (New York: Hatch & Co., c. 1869) Black plate proof. 10” x 8”. Near fine on card stock. $800

The predecessor of the bicycle, the Draisienne, was introduced in Paris in 1818. It featured a seat suspended between a front and back wheel, with handle bars for steering. It was propelled, Flintstones-like, by using one’s feet. Many decades later, when the design was improved with the addition of pedals mounted on the front wheel, this new version was christened the velocipede. In 1868 and 1869 a certain set of Americans took to the new invention in droves. Many manufacturers stepped forward to take advantage of the new market, one being John Ashcroft, who already had an established business producing safety valves and other metal hardware. Unfortunately, the craze was short-lived. The velocipede took considerable strength and skill to master, combining as it did the pedal function and steering in the front wheel. Adding to that deficiency were an uncushioned seat, metal wheels, and terrible roads. It was only with the introduction of rear-wheel chain-driven locomotion and pneumatic tires in the late 1880s that bicycles became the popular sport known to us today. Surely, this placard was produced in a full-color finished version, but we could find no holdings of either version.

The Concert to Top All Concerts

(National Peace Jubilee) Rheimunt Sayer. “Exterior View of Coliseum for the Grand National Peace Jubilee, Boston Mass,…1869” (Boston: New England Lith. Co., 1869). Image: 14″ 18.75″. Frame: 20″ x 24.75″. Hand colored lithograph. Good with three dime-sized water drops visible on the sky at right and a stain to the right of the caption. Framed under plexiglass in a handsome mid-20th century brass frame with a linen mat and metallic bevel. $400

The Grand National Peace Jubilee was a musical celebration organized by Patrick Gilmore that took place in Boston over four days in mid- June 1869. It featured an orchestra and a chorus, as well as numerous soloists. More than 11,000 performers participated, including the famous violinist Ole Bull as the orchestra’s concertmaster and Carl Zerrahn as director of the choral forces. The Coliseum was a temporary building erected for the event near today’s Copley Square in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood. Historian Richard Hansen says the event was the “high-water mark in the influence of the band in American life.” Worldcat locates two holdings; AAS also owns a copy.

The Pioneer Cabin of the Yo-Semite Valley (New York: Currier and Ives, c. 1870) Hand-colored lithograph. 11” x 15”. VG, bright coloring, uniform toning. $500

This inviting image of what was surely a tough existence depicts a man sitting with his dog in front of a small, neat cabin surrounded by the majestic rock walls and snowy peaks of Yosemite Valley. While this is not a rare print, oddly enough, it does not appear in Worldcat, though we know that the Library  of Congress and the Bancroft Library at the University of California Berkeley own copies of it. 

The Largest Straw Hat Factory in the World

National Straw Works, H.O. Bernard & Co., Westboro, Mass. (New York: E. Wells, Sackett, & Rankin, c. 1880). 24″ x 30″. Tinted lithograph. VG+, mounted on acid-free paper. $2,000

This impressive view of Bernard’s National Straw Works on Cottage Street in Westboro, Massachusetts, proclaims that the factory, is “the most extensive manufactory of men’s, women’s, and children’s straw hats in the world.” Above the view are small oval portraits of the National Straw Work partners: H[enry] O. Bernard, G[eorge] N. Smalley, H[enry] K. Taft, T[heodore] B. Smart, and J.P. Bancroft. We date the print based on information in Jay Last’s The Color Explosion, in which he states that the firm of Wells, Sackett, & Rankin existed for only a short time, from 1880 to 1883. We could locate only one institutional holding, an inferior copy at the Boston Athenaeum. Large lithographic views of nineteenth century American businesses are unusual and scarce.

A Beautiful California Bird’s Eye

Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California, 1885. (Oakland: Elliott & Co., 1885) Lithograph. Image: 20.25” x 25.75”. Sheet: 24” x 30.75″. Near fine, lightly toned. $1,500

This handsome bird’s eye view of the town of Santa Rosa, in northern California is adorned with vignettes of nineteen buildings and a key to fifty-two buildings in the view itself. In the lower left corner is an advertisement for “Guy E. Grosse broker in real estate,” which leads us to believe he was the publisher. Reps #405. WorldCat locates five copies, four of which are in California.  

Geo. E. Norris. Amesbury, Mass. (Troy: The Burleigh Lith., 1890). 20.5” x 34”. Tinted lithograph. Near fine, with some mottled to margins. Mounted on archival paper. $1000

This impressive view of the coastal city of Amesbury, Mass. was drawn by George Norris (1855-1926) of Brockton, Mass. During his active years – 1883 to 1897 – he published more than 135 views, most of which he drew himself and all of which were of northeastern towns. He contracted with Henry Burleigh of Troy to print his bird’s eyes, but he was always his own publisher. This is only one of two nineteenth century bird’s eyes produced of Amesbury. It is indubitably the more handsome. Reps lists only two holdings in public collections, the Huntington and the Library of Congress. 

Bird’s Eye Views by Bailey, Burleigh, et. al.

View of Bethel, Conn. (Boston: O. H. Bailey & Co,, 1879) Lithograph. 18” x 23”. VG+ with discoloration to edges. $800

Reps #524. The only bird’s eye produced of the western Connecticut town.

Brattleboro, VT. (Troy, NY: L. Burleigh, 1886) Lithograph. Image: 12″ x 27″. Frame: 22.25″ x 36.25″. Near fine, with light vertical burn mark to upper right. $1,200

Reps #4045. One of eight bird’s eye views produced in the 19th century of this southern Vermont city on the Connecticut.

Two of the Great Magazine Posters of the 1890s

Maxfield Parrish was one of America’s greatest illustrators. He is known for his distinctive saturated hues and idealized neo-classical imagery. He achieved his luminous coloring through glazing. This process involved applying alternating bright layers of oil color separated by varnish over a base rendering. The color Parrish blue was named after him. He studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and then at the Drexel Institute under Howard Pyle. His posters were more illustrative and detailed than those of Edward Penfield and Will Bradley, and marked by what Charles Hiatt referred to as “curious individuality.” In 1896 he placed second in a poster competition sponsored by The Century Magazine (see below). The judges, Elihu Vedder, F. Hopkinson Smith, and Harry B. Henderson, had denied him first place (won by J. C. Leyendecker) because his poster required five printings, when the competition rules set a limit of three. So the Century Company issued Leyendecker’s poster to advertise the August 1896 issue and waited ‘til the following August to use Parrish’s entry. By that time Parrish had been commissioned by Scribner’s Magazine to produce a poster for their August Fiction number (see below). So, by chance, in the early summer of 1897, two of his posters were on display both advertising the August issues of two of America’s leading monthlies. Arguably, they represent the best of his early work.

Maxfield Parrish. The Century Midsummer Number (NY: Thomas & Wylie Lithographic Co., 1897). Image: 19″ x 12.5″. Lithographed poster. Image field is near fine. Some chips and loss to matted out margins. $2,800

Maxfield Parrish. Scribner’s Fiction Number August (NY: [Scribner’s Magazine], 1897). Image: 19.75″ x 14.5″. Lithographed poster. Image field is near fine. Modest restoration to extreme edges. $3,200

A Classic A. B. Frost Hunting Scene

A.B. Frost. [Autumn Hunting Scene] c. 1900. Frame size: 11.25″ x 13.75″. Image size: 7.75″ x 9.75″. Near fine in an elegant weathered period frame. $2,500

Arthur Burdett Frost (January 17, 1851 – June 22, 1928) was an early American illustrator and cartoonist. He drew for most of the major magazines of the day including Century, Scribners, Harper’s Weekly, Collier’s, Puck, and Life. He illustrated more than ninety books and is considered one of the great illustrators in the golden age of American illustration. He was renowned for his realistic hunting and shooting paintings and prints, of which he produced hundreds during his long career.