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

Autograph letter signed as President to Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas [with] American flag bunting from Lincoln’s box at Ford’s Theatre. Washington, Executive Mansion, May 27, 1861

Abraham Lincoln, writing at the outset of the Civil War, recommends that the Army admit three volunteers from the highly divided city of Baltimore. He advises Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas, “I hate to reject any offered from what is called a Southern State.” [offered with] Bunting from the presidential box at Ford’s Theatre.

two items: $275,000

Her personal archive of approximately 350 photographs. [Hampstead and elsewhere], 1858-1864

This tremendous discovery is the extensive photographic archive of the little-known Victorian photographer Emma Frances Johnston. This is apparently the earliest comprehensive archive of a female photographer in private hands. Beginning around 1858, Johnston made this wonderful series of portraits of her friends and extended family comprising the intellectual and social world of nineteenth- century Hampstead in London.

$245,000

Leaves of Grass [with] Whitman’s own copy of his 1860 portrait. Brooklyn, New York, 1855

First edition, first issue, one of only 337 copies of the first issue, distinguished by its elaborately gilt-stamped cloth binding prepared in June/July 1855. Whitman reported that only 800 copies were printed; this copy is from the first group to be bound. The copies bound later did not have the extensive gilt stamping. Whitman paid for the book, supervised its production, and even set a number of pages in type.

two items: $160,000

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

Profile bust portrait of Charles Darwin, signed by Cameron. London: Colnaghi, 1868

The great Darwin portrait, Julia Margaret Cameron’s 1868 profile of Darwin is probably the most famous photograph of a 19th-century scientist. Darwin remarked, “I like this photograph very much better than any other which has been taken of me.”

$68,000

Portrait of Abraham Lincoln with his son Tad. Washington, February 5, 1865

Perhaps the most delightful of the Lincoln family photographs, this portrait shows an impish Tad leaning on a table as his seemingly bemused father sits on Gardner’s studio chair. Thomas “Tad” Lincoln was the youngest of the Lincoln boys.

$65,000

Ulysses S. Grant. Washington, c. 1865

$52,000

Lover’s Leap from Foochow and the River Min. London: Printed by the Autotype Fine Arts Company, 1873

This is a magnificent photograph from John Thomson’s legendary Foochow and the River Min. Thomson is the greatest single figure in nineteenth-century photography in China.

$45,000