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

Three portraits of Emerson

$1,500

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

Portrait of Sigmund Freud. London, 1938, printed 2017

Sternberger and Freud had known each other for years before they fled Europe with the rise of Nazism. Though Freud was terminally ill and at first hesitant about receiving visitors in 1938, the neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis said it “makes me feel good to see old-familiar faces again” when Sternberger arrived. This is said to have been Freud’s last portrait session before his death in 1939.

$900 unframed; framed: $1,300

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

Shaw is pictured in three-quarter view with artful shadow play down the right side of his face. Sternberger was a ‘master of light and shadow’ according to contemporary museum directors.

$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 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

Portrait of Albert Einstein. Princeton, New Jersey, 1950, printed 2017

In this portrait Sternberger shows Einstein dressed informally. Einstein was keenly aware of his public image, and often attempted to show a cheerful visage. The common backgrounds of the two men helped the photographer to put Einstein in a relaxed state and to capture him in a more vulnerable pose.

$1,250

Yediot Ma’ariv. “The Face of the Mandate from Beginning to End, Illustrated Supplement for May 15, 1948.”. Jerusalem, May 15, 1948

Ma’ariv was the most widely read newspaper in Israel for the two decades following the newspaper’s founding in 1948. This photo supplement was printed on the day of the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel and attached as a “Sabbath Supplement” to that day’s issue.

$1,200

A Vanished World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983

First edition. Signed and inscribed by Roman Vishniac: “It should not happen again Roman [and] Edith Vishniac 1985.”

$750