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

The Original Big Tree, 32 feet diameter. Charles Weed, 1864

Mammoth albumen print (15 ½ x 20 in.), mounted.

$37,500

Original glass plate interpositive prepared by Curtis for the printing of The North American Indian. Curtis, 1924

This is a splendid original glass plate made for Edward Curtis’s The North American Indian, the greatest photographic work on Native Americans. Curtis, one of the greatest American artists of his era, was the most celebrated photographer of North American Indians.

$35,000

Sentinel Rock, 3270 Feet High. San Francisco, 1864

This spectacular view shows Sentinel Rock towering above a rider on horseback in a well-lit clearing.

$25,000

Great Salt Lake City, Wasatch Mts. Salt Lake City, 1869

This is a splendid print of this classic Jackson view of Salt Lake City.

$16,000

An album of 32 photographs of Yosemite and the American West. Various places, c. 1890s

This beautiful album contains many splendid views of the scenic wonders of Yosemite. Subjects include the many magnificent falls, the Mariposa Grove of sequoias, and the great geological formations. At least two of the views in this collection were taken by Carleton Watkins. Those for which attribution to Watkins has been confirmed are singled out below, but this collection merits further investigation to identify Watkins photographs.

$12,000

Opening day of the Suez Canal. Port Said , Nov. 16, 1869

This photograph depicts the harbor and canal on the day of the opening of the Suez Canal, the “greatest engineering feat of the nineteenth century” (Smith). “Clearly, the canal’s opening festivities placed Egypt in a new way on the European cultural map” (Haddad, “Digging to India: Modernity, Imperialism, and the Suez Canal”).

$8,500

Collection of Ten Photographs from Mooney’s Pioneering Investigations of the Ghost Dance and Other Native American Circle Dances. Various places, c. 1892-93

The rare and important collection documents the famous Ghost Dance and related circle dances soon after Wounded Knee. The collection testifies to the tragic demise of the Native American spiritual and cultural practices during the tumultuous Ghost Dance period. These photographs were taken by James Mooney (1861-1921), an anthropologist with the Bureau of American Ethnology. He left Washington in late 1890 to investigate the potentially incendiary Ghost Dance movement. Mooney’s rare portrait of Wovoka is one highlight of the collection. Mooney’s Ghost Dance photographs are of the greatest rarity in the market. We can trace no others having appeared for sale.

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32 Fort Laramie Treaty Photographs. Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory, 1868

This landmark series of Alexander Gardner photographs documents the Fort Laramie Treaty conference. The Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868 guaranteed the Lakota ownership of the Black Hills in the Wyoming Territory. The treaty was signed by U.S. officials and representatives of the Arapaho, Northern Cheyenne, Crow, and the Brule, Oglala and Miniconjou Dakota. Intended to stop Indian hostilities against white settlers and miners traveling the Bozeman Trail, the treaty ended Red Cloud’s War.

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An important collection of 40 mammoth-plate photographs of the American West, created for the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Watkins, c. 1863-74.

Carleton Watkins exhibited these very photographs at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, the first world’s fair in America.  Watkins is the greatest of the first generation of photographers of the American West. His early photographs of Yosemite and Utah have never been surpassed. When his work was exhibited back East, the New York Times declared, “As specimens of the photographic art they are unequaled. The views are … indescribably unique and beautiful. Nothing in the way of landscapes can be more impressive.”

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