Tag Archive for: daguerreotypes

Personal items from legendary sharpshooter Annie Oakley to be auctioned March 18

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1926 check handwritten and hand-signed by Annie Oakley Butler, her married name

CLEARWATER, Fla. – On March 18, 2023, Blackwell Auctions will offer several items personally owned by Annie Oakley, including an engraved carriage clock gifted to her for her birthday during her European tour in 1901. Several other items will also be offered, including 16 books that were owned – and, in some cases, signed – by Oakley, including a book inscribed to her husband by the author, bandleader John Philip Sousa. The collection also boasts a personal check, signed by Oakley shortly before her death, made out to her niece.

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Daguerreotype portrait of Henry Fitz Jr. taken in January 1840. Price realized (for photographic archive): $300,000

Hindman sells early photography archive for $300K

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Daguerreotype portrait of Henry Fitz Jr. taken in January 1840. Price realized (for photographic archive): $300,000

Daguerreotype portrait of Henry Fitz Jr. taken in January 1840.
Price realized (for photographic archive): $300,000

CINCINNATI – On November 15, Hindman Auctions sold one of the earliest photographic portraits taken in America as part of a collection of photographs that realized $300,000. The archive was purchased by a midwestern museum. Offered in The Henry Fitz Jr. Archive of Photographic History auction, the photographs were recently rediscovered after lying for 87 years in an unheated shed in Peconic, New York. The cache included photographs of Henry Fitz Jr. (1808-1863) and his family taken between 1840 and 1842 as well as early telescopes and other optical devices.

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Smithsonian acquires stellar early American photography collection

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Unidentified artist, ‘Untitled (family, painted backdrop),’ undated, tintype. Smithsonian American Art Museum, the L. J. West Collection of Early American Photography, Museum purchase made possible through the Franz H. and Luisita L. Denghausen Endowment

Unidentified artist, ‘Untitled (family, painted backdrop),’ undated, tintype. Smithsonian American Art Museum, the L. J. West Collection of Early American Photography, Museum purchase made possible through the Franz H. and Luisita L. Denghausen Endowment

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) has acquired a collection of objects related to early American photography from the collector Larry J. West that transforms the museum’s photography holdings. The L.J. West Collection includes 286 objects from the 1840s to about 1925 in three groupings: works by early African American daguerreotypists James P. Ball, Glenalvin Goodridge and Augustus Washington; early photographs of diverse portrait subjects and objects related to abolitionists, the Underground Railroad and the role of women entrepreneurs in it; and photographic jewelry that represents the bridge between miniature painting and early cased photography such as daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and tintypes.

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