1850s Art

Utagawa Kuniyoshi Happy Feast at the Ôe Mountain (Ôeyama fukuju shusei) 1853 Woodblock print Oban size Published by Kiya Sojiro, 1853. Signed Ichiyusai Kuniyoshi ga. A triptych show...

Utagawa KUNIYOSHI The ghost of Asakura Togo 1851 Woodblock print Oban size Signed Ichiyusai Kuniyoshi ga. Published by Sumiyoshi Masagoro, 1851 Backed Ichikawa Kodanji IV as the gho...

Gabriel-Dominique DUDAN (Active 1830s-1850s) Oil on canvas 61 x 50 cm (77 x 66 cm with frame) Signed and dated lower right  "G. Dudan / 1854" Beautiful carved and gilded wooden frame from the 19th century Very good condition Gabriel Dudan...

The Bee Bride is an original lithograph on ivory-colored paper realized by J.J. Grandville from Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux, 1852. Published by Manesq & Harvard, ...

Wonderful English 19th century Fall landscape, with a figure on a pathway passing sone Elm or Oak trees. This piece is signed lower right and is framed in a Vintage American Gold Le...

Swiss Artillery is a lithograph by Antonio Zezon. Naples 1854. Interesting colored lithograph which describes some members of the Swiss Artillery: Individual in great dress - Offici...

Signed on plate with the Monogram of the artist “CM”. Original Prints. State III/III Passepartout included : 60 x 40 cm Image Dimensions : 24.5 x 18.5 cm

Henry Brittian Willis English plough team at rest during harvest Summertime. A painting by Henry Brittiam Willis capturing a 19th-century English plough team, complete with horses,...

Ichimura Uzaemon XIII - actor as Okaji of Gion, 1862 "The Six Poetry Immortals" A Japanese Ukiyo-e woodcut print created circa 1862 by artist Utagawa Kunisada (Japanese, 1786-1864). ...

Ancient View of Niagara Waterfalls is an original modern artwork realized in Italy in the first half of the 19th Century. Original Lithograph on Ivory Paper. Inscripted in capital...

The present woodcut engraving is an original print designed by Winslow Homer, originally published in Harper's Weekly on April 30, 1859. It is an excellent example of the many prints Homer produced of fashionable people engaged in leisurely activities, in this case along a picturesque countryside lane. The sign reading 'Belmont' on the left indicates this is probably near his home in Belmont Massachusetts. The image presents multiple figures, both men and women, riding horseback: Some in the distance gallop away, toward a town marked by a church steeple beyond. Three others in the foreground, including two equestrian women, gather around a group of children who have been gathering flowers and trapping birds...

Medium: mezzotint (engraved by David Lucas after the John Constable painting). Printed in 1855 on cream wove paper for the "English Landscape Scenery" portfolio, published in London ...

Madrid is an etching print on paper realized in the late 19th Century. Titled on the plate Good conditions with slight cutting and folding on margins.

Miss Pigoizeau is an original lithograph on ivory-colored paper realized by J.J. Grandville from Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux, 1852. Published by Manesq & Harvard,...

Medium: mezzotint (engraved by David Lucas after the John Constable painting). Printed in 1855 on cream wove paper for the "English Landscape S...

The present hand-colored lithograph is an excellent example of patriotic mid-nineteenth century American imagery. The print shows the battle and several of the major figures involved in the Battle of Lake Erie: At the center is a view of several frigates on the lake, embroiled in conflict. Above the battle is the quotation: "We have met the enemy and they are ours." Surrounding are laurel-lined roundels with portraits of Oliver Hazard Perry (1785-1819), Stephen Dicateur (1779-1820), Johnston Blakeley (1871-1814), William Bainbridge (1774-1833), David Porter (1780-1843), and James Lawrence (1781-1813) - all of these framed by American flags, banners and cannons. This print shows that the Battle of Lake Erie, part of the War of 1812, still held resonance for American audiences several decades later and was part of the larger narrative of the founding of the country. 9.5 x 13.5 inches, artwork 20 x 23.38 inches, frame Entitled in the image Signed in the stone, lower left "Lith. and Pub. by N. Currier" Inscribed lower right "2 Spruce N.Y." and "No. 1" Copyrighted lower center "Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1846 by N. Currier in the Clerk's office of the Southern District of N.Y." Framed to conservation standards using 100 percent rag matting and housed in a gold gilded moulding. Nathaniel Currier was a tall introspective man with a melancholy nature. He could captivate people with his piercing stare or charm them with his sparkling blue eyes. Nathaniel was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts on March 27th, 1813, the second of four children. His parents, Nathaniel and Hannah Currier, were distant cousins who lived a humble yet spartan life. When Nathaniel was eight years old, tragedy struck. Nathaniel’s father unexpectedly passed away leaving Nathaniel and his eleven-year-old brother Lorenzo to provide for the family. In addition to their mother, Nathaniel and Lorenzo had to care for six-year-old sister Elizabeth and two-year-old brother Charles. Nathaniel worked a series of odd jobs to support the family, and at fifteen, he started what would become a life-long career when he apprenticed in the Boston lithography shop of William and John Pendleton. A Bavarian gentleman named Alois Senefelder invented lithography just 30 years prior to young Nat Currier’s apprenticeship. While under the employ of the brothers Pendleton, Nat was taught the art of lithography by the firm’s chief printer, a French national named Dubois, who brought the lithography trade to America. Lithography involves grinding a piece of limestone flat and smooth then drawing in mirror image on the stone with a special grease pencil. After the image is completed, the stone is etched with a solution of aqua fortis leaving the greased areas in slight relief. Water is then used to wet the stone and greased-ink is rolled onto the raised areas. Since grease and water do not mix, the greased-ink is repelled by the moisture on the stone and clings to the original grease pencil lines. The stone is then placed in a press and used as a printing block to impart black on white images to paper. In 1833, now twenty-years old and an accomplished lithographer, Nat Currier left Boston and moved to Philadelphia to do contract work for M.E.D. Brown, a noted engraver and printer. With the promise of good money, Currier hired on to help Brown prepare lithographic stones of scientific images for the American Journal of Sciences and Arts. When Nat completed the contract work in 1834, he traveled to New York City to work once again for his mentor John Pendleton, who was now operating his own shop located at 137 Broadway. Soon after the reunion, Pendleton expressed an interest in returning to Boston and offered to sell his print shop to Currier. Young Nat did not have the financial resources to buy the shop, but being the resourceful type he found another local printer by the name of Stodart. Together they bought Pendleton’s business. The firm ‘Currier & Stodart’ specialized in "job" printing. They produced many different types of printed items, most notably music manuscripts for local publishers. By 1835, Stodart was frustrated that the business was not making enough money and he ended the partnership, taking his investment with him. With little more than some lithographic stones, and a talent for his trade, twenty-two year old Nat Currier set up shop in a temporary office at 1 Wall Street in New York City. He named his new enterprise ‘N. Currier, Lithographer’ Nathaniel continued as a job printer and duplicated everything from music sheets to architectural plans. He experimented with portraits, disaster scenes and memorial prints, and any thing that he could sell to the public from tables in front of his shop. During 1835 he produced a disaster print Ruins of the Planter's Hotel, New Orleans, which fell at two O’clock on the Morning of the 15th of May 1835, burying 50 persons, 40 of whom Escaped with their Lives. The public had a thirst for newsworthy events, and newspapers of the day did not include pictures. By producing this print, Nat gave the public a new way to “see” the news. The print sold reasonably well, an important fact that was not lost on Currier. Nat met and married Eliza Farnsworth in 1840. He also produced a print that same year titled Awful Conflagration of the Steamboat Lexington in Long Island Sound on Monday Evening, January 18, 1840, by which melancholy occurrence over One Hundred Persons Perished. This print sold out very quickly, and Currier was approached by an enterprising publication who contracted him to print a single sheet addition of their paper, the New York Sun. This single page paper is presumed to be the first illustrated newspaper ever published. The success of the Lexington print launched his career nationally and put him in a position to finally lift his family up. In 1841, Nat and Eliza had their first child, a son they named Edward West Currier. That same year Nat hired his twenty-one year old brother Charles and taught him the lithography trade, he also hired his artistically inclined brother Lorenzo to travel out west and make sketches of the new frontier as material for future prints. Charles worked for the firm on and off over the years, and invented a new type of lithographic crayon which he patented and named the Crayola. Lorenzo continued selling sketches to Nat for the next few years. In 1843, Nat and Eliza had a daughter, Eliza West Currier, but tragedy struck in early 1847 when their young daughter died from a prolonged illness. Nat and Eliza were grief stricken, and Eliza, driven by despair, gave up on life and passed away just four months after her daughter’s death. The subject of Nat Currier’s artwork changed following the death of his wife and daughter, and he produced many memorial prints and sentimental prints during the late 1840s. The memorial prints generally depicted grief stricken families posed by gravestones (the stones were left blank so the purchasers could fill in the names of the dearly departed). The sentimental prints usually depicted idealized portraits of women and children, titled with popular Christian names of the day. Late in 1847, Nat Currier married Lura Ormsbee, a friend of the family. Lura was a self-sufficient woman, and she immediately set out to help Nat raise six-year-old Edward and get their house in order. In 1849, Lura delivered a son, Walter Black Currier, but fate dealt them a blow when young Walter died one year later. While Nat and Lura were grieving the loss of their new son, word came from San Francisco that Nat’s brother Lorenzo had also passed away from a brief illness. Nat sank deeper into his natural quiet melancholy. Friends stopped by to console the couple, and Lura began to set an extra place at their table for these unexpected guests. She continued this tradition throughout their lives. In 1852, Charles introduced a friend, James Merritt Ives, to Nat and suggested he hire him as a bookkeeper. Jim Ives was a native New Yorker born in 1824 and raised on the grounds of Bellevue Hospital where his father was employed as superintendent. Jim was a self-trained artist and professional bookkeeper. He was also a plump and jovial man, presenting the exact opposite image of his new boss. Jim Ives met Charles Currier through Caroline Clark, the object of Jim’s affection. Caroline’s sister Elizabeth was married to Charles, and Caroline was a close friend of the Currier family. Jim eventually proposed marriage to Caroline and solicited an introduction to Nat Currier, through Charles, in hopes of securing a more stable income to support his future wife. Ives quickly set out to improve and modernize his new employer’s bookkeeping methods. He reorganized the firm’s sizable inventory, and used his artistic skills to streamline the firm’s production methods. By 1857, Nathaniel had become so dependent on Jims’ skills and initiative that he offered him a full partnership in the firm and appointed him general manager. The two men chose the name ‘Currier & Ives’ for the new partnership, and became close friends. Currier & Ives produced their prints in a building at 33 Spruce Street where they occupied the third, fourth and fifth floors. The third floor was devoted to the hand operated printing presses that were built by Nat's cousin, Cyrus Currier, at his shop Cyrus Currier & Sons in Newark, NJ. The fourth floor found the artists, lithographers and the stone grinders at work. The fifth floor housed the coloring department, and was one of the earliest production lines in the country. The colorists were generally immigrant girls, mostly German, who came to America with some formal artistic training. Each colorist was responsible for adding a single color to a print. As a colorist finished applying their color, the print was passed down the line to the next colorist to add their color. The colorists worked from a master print displayed above their table, which showed where the proper colors were to be placed. At the end of the table was a touch up artist who checked the prints for quality, touching-in areas that may have been missed as it passed down the line. During the Civil War, demand for prints became so great that coloring stencils were developed to speed up production. Although most Currier & Ives prints were colored in house, some were sent out to contract artists. The rate Currier & Ives paid these artists for coloring work was one dollar per one hundred small folios (a penny a print) and one dollar per one dozen large folios. Currier & Ives also offered uncolored prints to dealers, with instructions (included on the price list) on how to 'prepare the prints for coloring.' In addition, schools could order uncolored prints from the firm’s catalogue to use in their painting classes. Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives attracted a wide circle of friends during their years in business. Some of their more famous acquaintances included Horace Greeley, Phineas T. Barnum, and the outspoken abolitionists Rev. Henry Ward, and John Greenleaf Whittier (the latter being a cousin of Mr. Currier). Nat Currier and Jim Ives described their business as "Publishers of Cheap and Popular Pictures" and produced many categories of prints. These included Disaster Scenes, Sentimental Images, Sports, Humor, Hunting Scenes, Politics, Religion, City and Rural Scenes, Trains, Ships, Fire Fighters, Famous Race Horses, Historical Portraits, and just about any other topic that satisfied the general public's taste. In all, the firm produced in excess of 7500 different titles, totaling over one million prints produced from 1835 to 1907. Nat Currier retired in 1880, and signed over his share of the firm to his son Edward. Nat died eight years later at his summer home 'Lion’s Gate' in Amesbury, Massachusetts. Jim Ives remained active in the firm until his death in 1895, when his share of the firm passed to his eldest son, Chauncey. In 1902, faced will failing health from the ravages of Tuberculosis, Edward Currier sold his share of the firm to Chauncey Ives...

John Stewart was a Scottish painter of rustic subjects and landscapes. HE exhibited 20 works at the Suffolk Street Exhibition location in London and 4 wor...

VIII Hunter Battalion is an original lithograph by Antonio Zezon. Naples 1853. Interesting colored lithograph which describes some members of the Hunter Battalion: A Spoiler in grea...

Lithograph realized by Daumier in 1859. Belongs to the Series "Actualités". Ref. Delteil 3228 Very good condition.

Watercolor and ink on paper, hand signed upper right and dated 29 December 1856. A striking composition depicting an African rider mounted on a white horse, holding a spear and dres...

Lithograph on paper realized by Auguste Raffet in 1859. Signed and dated in the plate. Very good condition. The Siege of Sevastopol was the decisive event of the Crimean War, wher...

This vintage salt print is titled, attributed and annotated in lithographic ink on the front of the mount.

Annual Events for Young Murasaki (July) - Tales of Genji - Japanese Woodblock Rightmost panel a triptych, depicting monthly events for Wakamurasaki (Young Murasaki). This is the month of July. There appears to be a lesson taking place, possibly for writing or poetry. Artist: Toyokuni III/Kunisada (1786 - 1864) Publisher: Ebisu-ya Shoshichist Presented in a new blue mat. Mat size: 19"H x 13"W Paper size: 14.5"H x 10"W Commentary on the triptych: In the Edo period, Tanabata was designated as one of the five seasonal festivals, and became an annual event for the imperial court, aristocrats, and samurai families, and gradually came to be celebrated by the general public. Its origins are said to be a combination of the Kikoden festival, which originated from the Chinese legend of Altair and the Weaver Girl, and Japan's ancient Tanabata women's faith. Ink is ground with dew that has accumulated on potato leaves, poems and wishes are written on five colored strips of paper, which are then hung on bamboo branches to celebrate the two stars that meet once a year. Although the illustration is a Genji painting...

Autre émotion maritime is a b/w lithograph (n.14) from the satirical print series “Les Trains de Plaisir”, composed of caricatures “de mœurs” (of behaviours), realized by Honoré Daum...

Y se le quema la casa is plate n. 18 (of 80) of the series Los Caprichos by Goya. This etching is an excellent proof of the first edition of 1799, before the bevels. Plate 17,9x12,...

Lithograph realized by Auguste Raffet in the mid-19th Century. Not signed, as issued.

HONORE DAUMIER (1808 - 1879) LE DIAMANT MAGNETISEUR.....1859 (DR 3227 iii/iii: LD 3227) Original lithograph 9 1/2 x 11 incl. text. Published in Le Chariv...

Les Garçons en Habit Noir is a b/w lithographed plate, from the series containing a total of 120 prints, Croquis Parisiens. Realized by Honoré Daumier (Franc...

Domestic Cats is an original lithograph on ivory-colored paper, realized by Paul Gervais (1816-1879). The artwork is from The Series of "Les Trois Règnes de la Nature", and was publi...

Lithograph on ivory-colored paper, realized by Paul Gervais (1816-1879). The artwork is from The Series of "Les Trois Règnes de la Nature", and was published in 1854. Good condition...

John Wainwright who flourished 1859 - 1869 A Surrey painter of still-life and landscapes, living in Long Ditton. He exhibited his work at the British Institution and Royal Society o...

Hussars of the Royal Guard is a lithograph by Antonio Zezon. Naples 1852. Interesting colored lithograph which describes an Official of the Hussars Regiment riding his horse. In ex...

Three women in the Saruwaka-machi District with a view of Kinryûzan Temple seen from the famous landmark Matsuchiyama. The woodblock print is from the series "Famous Places in Edo". ...

Bay Of Naples is an original artwork realized in 1857 by Thomas Charles Leeson Rowbotham. Watercolor heightened with white on paper. Signed and dated on lower right. This beautif...

Alfred S. Wall (American, 1825-1896) Untitled (Building the Railroad), 1859 Oil on canvas 14 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches Signed and dated lower left For Christmas, 2008, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette featured Alfred Wall's painting, Old Saw Mill from the collection of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, PA. It was painted in 1851 in the town of Lilly, Pennsylvania in the Allegheny Mountains. The newspaper description stated that "though the saw mill is long gone, it still conveys all the warmth and coziness of this time of year. The article, written by Patricia Lowry, continued: At first glance, Alfred S. Wall's painting of a saw mill in snowy woods triggers nostalgia for the coziness of a log cabin, the smell of a wood-burning fire and the warming of chilled hands and feet beside it. But as sentimental as it seems on the surface, Mr. Wall's painting has a deeper and unexpected context. This is more than a painting about sled-riding children and early industry planted in the middle of virgin forest. Intended or not, this is a painting about conquering the great divide of the Allegheny Mountains. For the third consecutive year, the Post-Gazette features a winter-scene painting on the cover of the Christmas Day newspaper. This year's painting, Old Saw Mill, was selected by co-publisher and editor-in-chief John Robinson Block and executive editor David Shribman during a visit to the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg. Mr. Wall, listed as a portrait painter in the 1850 census, was about 26 when he painted Old Saw Mill in 1851. The self-taught artist was born in Mount Pleasant, Westmoreland County, to William and Lucy Wall, who'd emigrated from England around 1820. An artistic sensibility ran in the family: William was a sculptor who carved ornate tombstones here; Alfred's children, A. Bryan and Bessie, were landscape painters, as was Alfred's older brother, William Coventry Wall. For more than a century the Walls formed a prominent art dynasty in Pittsburgh, and Alfred, eventually a partner in the city's most prestigious art gallery, was well known as a painter, dealer and restorer. In Old Saw Mill, two wood cutters, each holding an axe, meet outside the mill; one points in the direction of the forest. On the other side of the stream, one child pulls another down the hillside on a sled. Just behind the hill's slope, the roof of a building appears, perhaps the home of the sawyer. The luminous, late afternoon light comes from the northwest, casting lengthening shadows on the snow under a darkening sky. The saw mill in "Old Saw Mill" likely would have been impossible to track down had Mr. Wall, presumably, not written on the back of the painting: "old saw mill near Jct. 4, Portage RR, Pa." "There was no Junction 4," said Mike Garcia, park ranger at the Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site, about 90 miles east of Pittsburgh near Gallitzen, Cambria County. "But there was an Inclined Plane No. 4 at Lilly, and there was a saw mill there." In fact, there were at least six saw mills at Lilly over the years, said longtime resident Jim Salony, president of the Lilly-Washington Historical Society. But when he saw an image of the painting, Mr. Salony had no trouble coming up with a location. While there are no known photographs of the saw mill, he believes it stood near the intersection of Portage and Washington streets, next to Bear Rock Run. Mr. Salony, retired academic dean at Mount Aloysius College, didn't know exactly when the mill was torn down, but it's been gone since at least the late 1800s. He was pleased to learn of the painting, even though that knowledge came too late for inclusion in a new book about Lilly, The Spirit of a Community, for which he served as primary author and editor. It runs to more than 700 pages. For a little town -- population 869 last year -- Lilly has a lot of history. Nestled in a bowl on the western slope of the Allegheny Mountains about 3 miles south of Cresson, Lilly was first settled in 1806 by Joseph Meyer and his family, who named their 332-acre land patent Dundee. Although the Meyers had left by 1811, other settlers followed, but the community didn't flourish until the 1830s, when the Allegheny Portage Railroad began its 23-year-run through the town. For 200 years the Alleghenies had stood as an impediment to trade and travel between Pittsburgh and the east. A canal from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh would change that and compete with New York's Erie Canal. But a portage railroad would have to be built, on which teams of horses would lead the canal boats over the mountains. Engineer Sylvester Welch began his surveying from the small settlement at Lilly. The railroad would require 10 inclined planes, some quite steep, between Hollidaysburg and Johnstown. To build it, trees had to be cut along a 120-foot-wide right-of-way for 36 miles, along which track and engine houses had to be built. William Brown, who owned the saw mill on Bear Rock Run, built at least one of the engine houses at Inclined Plane No. 4; an 1834 contract also included fencing the dwelling lots at the head and foot of the plane. Lilly is located at what was the foot of Inclined Plane No. 4., giving the community one of its early informal names, Foot of Four. Named in 1883 for Richard Lilly, who'd completed the grist mill there, Lilly had another early name: Hemlock, so dubbed by a Portage Railroad traveler who smelled the bark stripped from the trees at the saw mill. Because there isn't another Allegheny Portage Railroad location like it, where a cut in the mountains opens into a bowl, Mr. Salony thinks it was Lilly that Charles Dickens wrote about following his trip from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh on the Pennsylvania Canal in late March 1842, describing what he saw after emerging from "the bottom of the cut": "It was very pretty while traveling, to look down into a valley full of light and softness, catching glimpses through the tree-tops of scattered cabins; children running to the doors; dogs bursting out to bark, who we could see without hearing; terrified pigs scampering homeward; families sitting out in their rude gardens; cows gazing upward with a stupid indifference; men in their shirt-sleeves looking on at their unfinished houses, planning out to-morrow's work; and we riding onward, high above them, like a whirlwind." To get to Lilly, Mr. Wall may have taken the Pennsylvania Canal from his home in Allegheny City, now the North Side. He'd married young, at 21, to Sarah Carr in 1846, the same year he began his career as an artist. By 1880 they were living in a brick townhouse at 104 (later 814) Arch St., now demolished. Across the river in Pittsburgh he shared a studio at 67 Fourth Ave. with his brother William; they later moved to Burke's Building, today the city's oldest office building at 209-211 Fourth. But often they worked outdoors, sometimes as part of the colony of artists that grew up around painter George Hetzel beginning in the late 1860s at Scalp Level...

Second Royal Guard Shooter Battalion is a lithograph by Antonio Zezon. Naples 1856. Interesting colored lithograph which describes the royal guard shooters: on the left, a sapper so...

Maki Rouge is an original lithograph on ivory-colored paper, realized by Paul Gervais (1816-1879). The artwork is from The Series of "Les Trois Règnes de la Nature", and was publishe...

Skillfully rendered pencil drawing of various 19th century era figures at work, circa 1850. Original artwork on paper displayed on a white mat with a gold border. Archival plastic ...

XIII Hunter Battalion is an original lithograph by Antonio Zezon. Naples 1854. Interesting colored lithograph which describes some members of the Hunter Battalion: Trumpet in great ...

Lovely one-of-a-kind pencil and watercolor sketch of various figures and a work horse, circa 1850. Original artwork on paper displayed on a white mat with a gold border. Archival pl...

Playful one-of-a-kind pencil sketch of various 18th century figures going about their daily activities, circa 1850. Original artwork on paper displayed on a white mat with a gold bo...

Here for your consideration is a wonderfully detailed miniature painting of the Matterhorn. Signed and titled verso. Attributed to the artist William Archibald Wall. Dated 6/50 verso...

Artist: Utagawa Hiroshige (Hiroshige Ando 1797-1858) Title: No.12 Ueno Yamashita Series: One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (名所江戸百景) Size: O-ban 大判 Age: 1858 Fine impression, colo...

Osakae is an original artwork realized in the 1857 by Ichiyôsai Yoshitaki. Woodcut print Chuban. The actor Nakamura Kanjaku I as Dote no Oroku, scene in the first act third scene o...

Beautiful lithograph with margins, realized by Daumier in 1855. It belongs to the Series "L'Exposition Universelle" Ref. Delteil 2702.

Kabukie is an original modern artwork realized by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798 – 1861) in the half of the 19th Century. Original woodcut from the series...

The Tormented Fox is an original lithographs by J.J. Grandville from "Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux, 1852. Published by Manesq & Harvard, Paris. Good Conditions b...

Randolph John Rogers (American, 1825 - 1892) Randolph Rogers' Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii debuted in 1856 to critical and public acclaim, solidifying Rogers’ position as a pre-eminent American sculptor and it remains one of the artist’s most celebrated works today. The subject of Nydia is drawn from Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii 1834. After touring the ruins of the ancient city in 1833, and inspired by the stories of blinding volcanic ash, he composed the tale of Nydia, a slave who led her master, Glaucus, to safety. Rogers depicts Nydia at the moment that she and Glaucus have become separated in their perilous journey through the rubble and Nydia seeks familiarity in the surrounding chaos, her distress evident in her pained expression. The grace of the sculpture is at odds with the turmoil portrayed; a toppled Corinthian capital lies at her feet and obstructs her next step, indicated by the tilt of her back foot and grip on her walking stick. Examples of this model can be found in major American collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Literature, Millard F Rogers, Jr. Randolph Rogers, American Sculptor in Rome. University of Massachusetts Press, 1971, American Figurative Sculpture in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1986. Joyce K Schiller. "Nydia, A Forgotten Icon of the Nineteenth Century." Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Born in Waterloo, New York, Randolph John Rogers became an expatriate* sculptor of idealized figures, portraits, and commemorative works in Neo-Classical* and Realist* styles. He worked in clay, plaster, marble and bronze, and lived both in Italy and the United States. He made 167 examples of Nydia in two sizes (varies depending on base height) 36" and 54'. Rogers was raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and as a young man did woodcuts* for the local newspaper, The Michigan Argus, and also worked as a baker's assistant and a dry goods clerk. In 1847, he moved to New York City, where he hoped to find work as an engraver*, but failing to do so, worked in a dry goods store owned by John Steward...

Etching and aquatint realized by Francisco Goya. Plate 21 from the Series "Los Caprichos". Beautiful proof of 2nd Edition, printed in 1855 ca. Includes a wooden frame cm. 38.5x32.

Valletta From the Quarantine Harbour is an original modern artwork realized in Italy in the first half of the 19th Century. Original Lithograph on Ivory Paper. Inscripted in capit...

The Skeleton is an original lithograph on ivory-colored paper, realized by Paul Gervais (1816-1879). The artwork is from The Series of "Les Trois Règnes de la Nature", and was publis...

Ménagerie Parisienne is an Original Lithograph realized by Gustave Doré (1832-1883). Very good condition included a white cardboard passpartout (50x62.5 ...

III Swiss Regiment is an original lithograph by Antonio Zezon. Naples 1854. Interesting colored lithograph which describes some members of the Swiss Regiment: In the foreground an s...

Late 19th century French School, unsigned and painted circa 1860. Oil on artist prepared panel. A late 19th century oil landscape, painted in the style of Jean-François Millet, show...

Original watercolor of a hunter and his dog taking a late afternoon stroll in the countryside. Signed middle bottom and dated 1852 or 1853 J. Hamilto...

Locataires et Propriétaires (Tenants and Owners) is the name of the Complete Suite of 11 lithographed plate (2nd series), published on   Le Charivari, French magazine,   from Februar...

Hebe and Jupiter by Albert-Ernest CARRIER-BELLEUSE (1824-1887) A bronze group with nuanced light brown patina signed on the base "Carrier" and dated "1858" Presented on a rounded c...

This vintage salt print is titled, attributed and annotated in lithographic ink on the front of the mount. Printed 1850s.

J.J. Grandville from Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux, 1852. Published by Manesq & Harvard, Paris. Signed on the plate. With the description and notes in French. G...

Beautiful lithograph with margins, realized by Daumier in 1855. It belongs to the Series "L'Exposition Universelle" Ref. Delteil 2676