Liberty’s Torch in Madison Square Park. no publisher, negative ca. 1876, made from a print, late 19th century.

The torch of the Statue of Liberty was exhibited in Madison Square Park, New York to raise funds for the statue’s completion.  The torch remained in the park from 1876 through 1882.

$1,800

Portrait of Frida Kahlo. Sternberger, Mexico City, 1952, printed 2017

Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera had become intimate friends of photographer Marcel Sternberger and his wife Ilse by that time. The couple held Sternberger’s work in such high regard that Rivera said it was the first time [I’ve] seen the real me and above his bed in Kahlo’s lifelong house La Caza Azul hangs a portrait of Frida by Sternberger.

$1,525

Vietnamese Musicians. Saigon, c. late 1860s

The French photographer Émile Gsell became the first commercial photographer based in Saigon following his first expedition to photograph Angkor in 1866.

$1,500

Collection of three portraits of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Various photographers, 1860s-1880s

Three portraits of Emerson

$1,500

Portrait of Author Pearl S. Buck. New York, 1948, printed 2017

Buck won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938 for “notable works which pave the way to a human sympathy passing over widely separated racial boundaries and for the studies of human ideals which are a great and living art.”

$900 unframed; framed: $1,300

Portrait of Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru. New York, 1949, printed 2017

Sternberger presents a careful composition in this portrait of Jawaharlal Nehru. The crisp white Khaddar cap and dark shadows offset each other. This photograph was used as Nehru’s official government portrait in India and could be found in every school, government office, and embassy worldwide. It continues to provide the cover for Nehru’s seminal Glimpses of World History, a collection of letters about the history of humankind written from prison.

$900 unframed; framed: $1,300

Portrait of Stieglitz’s Paramour Dorothy Norman. New York, 1948, printed 2017

Norman learned the art of photography from Alfred Stieglitz and became a highly skilled amateur. The two became lovers while Stieglitz was married to Georgia O’Keeffe.

$900 unframed; framed: $1,300

Portrait of Ambassador Dr. Hu Shih. Washington, 1939, printed 2017

Dr. Hu was educated under the Boxer [War] Indemnity Scholarship program and was a graduate of Cornell University. At the time of this sitting he was China’s ambassador to the United States. A respected member of the Chinese intelligentsia, he advocated for the written vernacular Chinese that is still in use today.

$900 unframed; framed: $1,300

Portrait of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Basis for the U.S. Dime. Washington, 1939, printed 2017

This photograph was the basis for FDR’s bust on the face of the American dime, first minted in 1946.

$900 unframed; framed: $1,300

Portrait of George Bernard Shaw examining stamps. London, 1938, printed 2017

In this portrait Shaw examines the stamps which Sternberger had designed for the Belgian Royal Family, featuring the Royal children. Shaw was a philatelist, and the offer of the stamps was part of Sternberger’s method to gain access to Shaw.

$900 unframed; framed: $1,300