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.

$25,000

An album of 20 excellent views of Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls, New York, compiled in 1867

An outstanding album containing beautiful and unusual images including, as its final image, one of the most remarkable North American photographs of the period.

$25,000

G. F. Watts. Cameron, October 1865

This splendid portrait is inscribed and signed on the mount by Cameron: “G.F. Watts From Life not enlarged Julia Margaret Cameron.”

$22,000

Civil War carte-de-visite album featuring many signed CDVs. Mathew Brady and others, 1860s

This important Civil War album includes carte-de-visite photographs signed by the following Civil War notables: Winfield Scott (signed on verso), Joseph Hooker, George McClellan, Fitz John Porter, Louis Philippe, comte de Paris, Robert d’Orleans, Duke of Chartres, Robert Anderson, William Seward, Gideon Welles, Simon Cameron, Montgomery Blair.

$18,500

Autograph note signed to Robert Watt with original albumen print photograph. No place, July 16, 1874

Mark Twain the humorist. Samuel Clemens sent this delightful humorous note with the accompanying half- length standing portrait of the debonair author.

$18,000

Profiles in Courage. New York: Harper, (c.1956)

Presentation copy inscribed by Kennedy: “For Alfred Eisenstaedt with every good wish John Kennedy.”

$17,000

Splendid album containing 50 watercolors, 70 photographs, and fine calligraphic selections of poems and prose. Mostly Possingworth and environs, 1879 - ca. 1905

This magnificent, imposing album was made by a prominent late-Victorian hostess, patron of the arts, and gifted amateur artist. Helen Rose Huth was the wife of the banker Louis Huth. The Huths were major art collectors, and Helen sat for both George Frederic Watts and James Abbott McNeill Whistler who painted the celebrated “Arrangement in Black, No. 2: Portrait of Mrs Louis Huth.”

$16,000

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

Daguerreotype portrait of John Romeyn Brodhead. London: Mayall, 1848

A splendid half-plate daguerreotype of Herman Melville’s advisor and agent John Brodhead, scholar and diplomat.

John Romeyn Brodhead (1814-1873) was a historian and a member of the American diplomatic corps. Best remembered for his services as Herman Melville’s agent in London, Brodhead had known Melville and his family since their youth.

$15,000

King of Siam’s State Barge. Bangkok, c. 1865

This is a magnificent two-panel view of the king’s barge on the water, with dozens of oarsmen ready to put their paddles in to the water. The king’s ornate covered throne is at the rear of the vessel. The riverbank in the background is crowded with low thatched roof buildings.

$15,000