Collection of Glass Plate Negative Prints of Abraham Lincoln and Civil War Figures

Known as "America's first great photograph collector," this pioneering figure championed the preservation of historical photographs, traveling the country to rescue original glass plate negatives from certain destruction; so little appreciated and understood were they that he occasionally found them tossed aside in barns and sometimes even reused as glass panes in windows. Meserve managed to save countless original negatives created by Mathew B. Brady, Alexander Gardner and other seminal photographers from certain destruction. To the Lincoln images he assigned numbers ("Meserve numbers") still in use today. Meserve produced small format (2” X 3”) prints (truncated) from many of his negatives for a series of small print-run booklets, today highly desirable and sought after. For special occasions and friends he would produce large format prints using the original glass plate negatives. The immediacy of these first-generation prints is startling -- we've grown so accustomed to seeing umpteenth-generation reproductions of these portraits in various books that prints made off the original negative practically jump off the page. The blacks are black, the whites are white, and the overall clarity of the image brings out every detail -- a far cry from the washed-out reproductions seen elsewhere. Ralph G. Newman (1912-98) founded the noted Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago just before World War Two, changing from a general used book shop (House of Books, Inc.) to a specialist dealer at the urging of his friend Carl Sandburg. He befriended Frederick Hill Meserve and worked with him on a variety of Lincoln projects in the 1940s and ‘50s. Offered here is Ralph Newman’s personal collection of Frederick Hill Meserve prints, acquired directly from Newman in 1989. The collection begins with a full-page letter from Meserve to Newman dated December 4, 1952, discussing their mutual friend Carl Sandburg’s upcoming 75th birthday and pondering what was probably an offer from Newman to purchase his glass plate negative collection – “I am too busy to play with it and count its thousands of items.” The remainder of the collection consists of 22 prints (approximately 8" X 10", with two slightly smaller): Large prints consist of three Abraham Lincoln images and one exceptionally rare print of the hanging of the conspirators, one print of Jefferson Davis, eleven prints of important Union and Confederate generals (Grant, Sherman, Halleck, McClellan, McClellan and wife, Beauregard, Hooker, Jackson, Butterfield, Bragg, Butler), two Civil War-era journalists (Charles A. Dana and Marcus M. Pomeroy) and five small format prints (three of Daniel Webster and one each of author John Watts DePeyster and famed nurse Mary “Mother” Bickerdyke). These five small prints were made at Newman’s request and Meserve inscribes each in pencil to Newman's friend Carl Haverlin (1899-1985), a noted Lincoln/Civil War scholar and radio broadcast pioneer, president of music licensing innovator BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.). Every large print is identified on the verso in Meserve’s distinctive script in bold pencil (as was his habit), occasionally with a phrase noting “From a Brady original negative.” Although Meserve was never consistent in noting this on his prints, it is believed he made all his prints from the original negative or the earliest state negative in his possession. The hanging of the Lincoln conspirators image is extraordinarily rare, and many others are extremely scarce in this original negative form of such unparalleled quality. The Lincoln images are especially collected and very seldom come on the market. A rare and handsome collection of first-generation Mathew Brady and other prints from the pre-eminent photography historian of the 20th century. (Inventory #: 43479)