Mathew Brady’s Great Americans: Prints from the Original Glass Negatives in the Meserve Collection, produced in association with Time-Life Books Inc., 1976.
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Portfolio
Mathew Brady’s Great Americans: Prints from the Original Glass Negatives in the Meserve Collection, produced in association with Time-Life Books Inc., 1976.
ca. 1864
Portfolio with gelatin silver prints
1271/2500
Overall: 24.3 x 30 x 3.2 cm
Gift of Donald K. Weber, 2006
2006.0445.0001-0011
Description11 toned gelatin silver prints made from Mathew Brady's Civil War-era glass negatives and published in 1976 by Time-Life Books as a collection of ten portraits of significant historical figures. The subjects include President Abraham Lincoln, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Samuel B. Morse, and others. All but one of the prints are small portraits mounted on the front covers of folded, heavyweight paper, above printed copies of the subjects' signatures and an embossed seal confirming the edition - 1271/2500 - and the use of original Brady collodion-glass negatives. The first photograph in the portfolio is a full-page print of Lincoln's portrait, taken by Brady's assistant Anthony Berger. Each of the smaller portraits is followed by a text about the subject, and the entire series is prefaced with a lengthier text about Brady by Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr. The portfolio, a clamshell box designed to look like a book with gold-lined edges, gold-printed text, and an ornately patterned covering, is in good condition with a few signs of damages at the corners and along the binding.
