Thursday, March 31, 2016

Spring Sale Preview: The Really Big Pictures

Our generous community always donates beautiful art and photography books. This year, we received some notable and unusually large format art books.

First, two beautiful issues of "Smyth's Sketches in the Canadas." John Richard Coke Smyth painted the original water colors of Canada when he visited in 1838 as drawing master to the daughters of Governor General, the Earl of Durham. The edition was reproduced in 1968 from an original in the Royal Ontario Museum. It is 14" x 21" and includes 23 full color plates of a variety of Canadian scenes, printed on heavy paper.


 

Second is a collection of Currier & Ives lithographs. We don't often encourage cutting up books for their illustrations, but in this case we'll make an exception  -- because it came to us with a couple pages missing. However, it still has more than 50 full-color plates on a host of scenes of American life from 1834–1895 (the duration of the printing firm's operations). Subjects include the Civil War, railroads, sports, portraits, and historical events.

 



Many more art books will be highlighted in the display case preview, which will be posted soon. Stay tuned!

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