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Albert Bierstadt’s artist’s sketchbook from a trip to Switzerland in June and July 1896 led the sale, going out at $25,000. Contained within were five drawings in watercolor and approximately 25 pencil sketches (many double-page, several captioned and dated). The oblong format sketchbook bore an ink stamp: “From the Estate of Mary S. Bierstadt, March 1917” (the artist’s second wife) on the inside cover.
Review By W.A. Demers; Photos Courtesy Swann Auction Galleries
NEW YORK CITY — Swann Galleries’ spring maps and atlases, natural history and color plate books sale on June 22 offered varied material for collectors of virtually any interest and level. In addition to cartographic histories of places ranging from Africa to the Yukon, Boston to Britain, the sale offered and was led by Albert Bierstadt’s artist’s sketchbook from a trip to Switzerland in June and July 1896. Realizing $25,000, the sketchbook contained five drawings in watercolor and approximately 25 pencil sketches (many double-page, several captioned and dated). The oblong format sketchbook, 5¼ by 7 inches, was covered with plain brown cloth with pencil scabbard and bore an ink stamp: “From the Estate of Mary S. Bierstadt, March 1917” (the artist’s second wife) on the inside cover.
The sale total was $465,968 with a sell-through rate by lot of 90 percent. Offered were 239 lots and 216 sold. Registered bidders numbered 230.
An atlas by Gerard Mercator and Jodocus Hondius from 1630, Atlas sive Cosmographicae Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura, engraved with an allegorical title, contained 180 full pages of engraved maps with French text. Published by Johannes Cloppenburgh, Amsterdam, it represented the first of the so-called Cloppenburgh editions, which featured new engraved maps in a larger format. It went out at $15,000.
New engraved maps in a larger format were the selling point for this 1630 atlas by Gerard Mercator and Jodocus Hondius. Atlas sive Cosmographicae Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura contained 180 full pages of engraved maps with French text. It sold for $15,000.
Native American history was notable with Thomas McKenney and James Hall’s History of the Indian Tribes of North America, which was bid to $15,000. A total of 72 (of 120) hand-colored lithographed plates with strong original hand-coloring, lithographed map and nine leaves of facsimile signatures were contained in Volumes 2 and 3 only. The folio measured 20 by 14½ inches in the worn publisher’s gilt half morocco, with front boards detached.
Surviving from a 1742 printing in Nuremburg, Germany, by Homan Heirs, was a celestial atlas by Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr, Atlas Coelestis in Quo Mundus Spectabilis et in Eodem Stellarum Omnium Phoenomena Notabilia in 30 hand-colored double-page celestial charts, all engraved, illustrated celestial movements, theories and planetary diagrams.
Paving the way for prints of birds and botanicals was John James Audubon’s “Blue Crane or Heron; View Near Charlestone [sic], S.C.” Plate CCCVII, London: Robert Havell, 1836. Rarely seen without hand-coloring, it was an uncolored aquatint and engraved plate from Audubon’s Birds of America, on wove paper watermarked: “JWhatman 1836,” 26¾-by-34¾-inch sheet size. It achieved a final price of $12,500.
George Mivart’s 1896 Monograph of the Lories, or Brush-Tongued Parrots, Composing the Family Loriidae contained four lithographed distribution maps with outline color-printing and 61 brilliantly hand-colored lithographed plates after John Gerrard Keulemans. The small folio crossed the block at $10,625.
Birds, colorful and exotic ones at that, are the stars of George Mivart’s 1896 Monograph of the Lories, or Brush-Tongued Parrots, Composing the Family Loriidae. Inside the publisher’s gilt-blocked brown cloth binding were four lithographed distribution maps with outline color-printing and 61 brilliantly hand-colored lithographed plates after John Gerrard Keulemans. The small folio, 12½ by 10 inches, published by R.H. Porter, London, 1896, was bid to $10,625.
Botanical material was highlighted by William Sharp’s 1854 large-format book containing chromolithographed plates of the life phases of exotic giant flowering water lilies. Catalog notes deem them “some of the finest botanical images ever produced in America,” some of the earliest to employ the multi-stone printing process. Victoria Regia; or the Great Water Lily of America earned $10,000.
Mapping the “Mighty Mississippi” in a Nineteenth Century steamboat promotion piece fell to Myron Coloney and Sidney B. Fairchild, who produced Ribbon Map of the Father of Waters, a hand-colored lithographed strip map on five joined sheets charting the river’s entire 2,600-mile course from Lake Itasca, Minn., to the Gulf of Mexico. Reeling into its original wooden cylinder case, it sprawled to 2 by 132 inches map size and had its original linen backing. Printed in St Louis: Gast, Moeller & Co., 1866, the map left the gallery at $9,375.
Prices given include the buyer’s premium as stated by the auction house. For information, www.swanngalleries.com or 212-254-4710.
