Early Photography of China Collection: A highly important collection in development.. Various places, 1850s-1930s

The most valuable collection of early China photography in private hands, the Early Photography of China Collection includes the greatest masterworks of China photography by the foremost photographers working in China in the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the 20th century. The collection has been assembled over the course of many years, and we continue to expand and refine it as worthy photographs and archives become available. This collection, unrivaled in quality and extent in private hands, provides a unique opportunity to own one of the greatest collections of Chinese photography extant. We are eager to acquire important China photographs, from individual objects to albums and collections. We invite you to contact us.

Collection in development

Magnificent Album of Mammoth Photographs of the American West, with other subjects. various, ca. 1865-1880s

This magnificent American West photograph album contains an astounding 21 mammoth photographs by leading photographers including Carleton Watkins, Charles R. Savage, and Isaiah West Taber, as well as other important photographs.

$350,000

Ambrotype Portrait of John D. Rockefeller. Cleveland, Ohio: Wiliam C. North, c. 1857-1858

This famous portrait of John D. Rockefeller at age 18 is the earliest known photograph of the greatest titan of American business and industry.

$150,000

An extraordinary collection of photographs of Central Park by its first official photographer. New York, 1862

Pioneering photographs of Central Park. One of the earliest photographers to work in New York

$135,000

Mammoth Plate Portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Washington, November 8, 1863

A classic mammoth portrait of Abraham Lincoln, showing the President just days before he delivered the Gettysburg Address.

$95,000

An extraordinary collection of 26 photographic portraits of leading photographers. Various processes, 1850s-1890s

This superb collection of photographs of photographers documents the spread of photography from its inventor Daguerre through the art’s earliest practitioners in the United States and ultimately to the great photographers of the Civil War and the American West.

$75,000

Photographs of the Holy Land comprising the following volumes: [I:] Sinai and Palestine; [II:] Lower Egypt, Thebes, and the Pyramids; [III:] Upper Egypt and Ethiopia.. London, Glasgow, and Edinburgh: William MacKenzie, [1862]

A handsome set of Frith’s photographs. This edition’s gold-toned photographs are preferred over the earlier editions for their “stronger quality” (Gernsheim).

$55,000

Portrait of Charles Darwin, signed by Darwin and by Cameron. Cameron, [1868]

THE ICONIC PORTRAIT OF CHARLES DARWIN, boldly signed by Charles Darwin and by Julia Margaret Cameron.

$52,000

Daguerreotype Portrait of Baltus Stone. [Philadelphia], 1846

This remarkable portrait of Revolutionary War veteran Baltus Stone is one of the very few daguerreotypes of a person who had lived in colonial America.

$50,000

Panorama of San Francisco from California St. Hill. San Francisco: Morse’s Gallery, 1877

“One of the supreme conceptual and technical achievements in the history of architectural photography.” – David Harris

This iconic, 7-foot long image of San Francisco is one of the landmarks of 19^th-century American photography. “The photographs show the extraordinary extent of a city that had come into existence a mere thirty years before and which would be destroyed by earthquake and subsequent fires thirty years later” (Getty Museum Journal). Seamlessly combining a series of eleven photographs, Muybridge created a 360 degree view of the city, producing what Rebecca Solnit calls “an impossible sight, a vision of the city in all directions, a transformation of a circular space into a linear photograph.”

$45,000