Rare Book Monthly
Articles - October - 2008 Issue
Connecting Word and Image
Images resonnate.
In the early 1990s, when I encountered a random image I was interested but not particularly motivated. I was then still following my long established interest in books, simply aiming higher and therefore after "bigger" books, mainly early material relating to the discovery, exploration and development of the new world. The thinness and increasing prices of that market led me to consider other things. By luck, having subscribed by the year to a broad cross-section of Sotheby's catalogues, I encountered the first painting I acquired. It's a scene of Glens Falls by Henry A. Ferguson. It's not dated but appears to be from the 1850's. It was simply attractive, an apparently accurate representation of this industrial community on the Hudson River well north of Albany. It was about $20,000 and I have never regretted its purchase. In the following five years I increasingly looked for books with images and seemed to pay less attention to pure content. In 2000 I bought a second painting; this one by Paul Weber of the "Catskill Mountain House in the far distance" from a dealer in Boston. I paid $30,000 and suspected I was overpaying but it too has proven to fit well into my collection. A few years earlier I considered a very large late 1840's Thomas Cole painting of the Catskill Mountain House I did not purchase. Later I would wish I had. Then, when the Paul Weber came up I simply wrote the check: the consolation prize that has turned out to be the lynchpin of my evolving collector focus on the Hudson Valley with Catskill as its epicenter. This sleepy town was in the mid 19th century the emotional heart of the Hudson River region and many painters of note have left their canvases to memorialize the era. In the Weber painting the Mountain House faces west to the unseen Hudson. In fact, the Hudson, seen or not, looms over every aspect of Hudson valley life in the 19th century.
Gradually I became aware of other ways that images of the Hudson Valley have been preserved. Photographs, lithographs, maps and broadsides it turns out have always lingered in the shadows of books. Simply by adjusting my thinking I began to see what had always been present but what I had mostly ignored. My Swann [Auction House] subscription for more than ten years, had included photography and lithographs. I simply started to pay more attention. In truth I had to see the flow of material for several years to understand it. Museums often have great material but the idea I could develop a collection of images built on personal themes was beyond my expectation. Bill Reese, the exceptional book dealer, in this period began to issue occasional catalogues of paintings so I received further innoculations. Visits to library exhibitions also informed my perspective. The Rosenbach Musuem's permanent exhibitions then took my expectation of the relationship between books, objects and paintings to a higher level. Then in 2005 I interviewed Jay Snider of Pennsylvania about his upcoming auction of selected books at Christies and saw first hand his exceptional collection of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania images. I came away thinking he was achieving something remarkable and decided to intensify my concentration on images. This single wall is some evidence of the progress I've since made.
So between the Ferguson and the Weber there is a photograph and receipt, two small broadsides, an early lithograph and a larger broadside, all purchased on eBay over the past three years for less than a thousand dollars. An early map of Albany and Schenectady [to the left of the Weber] and another earlier map of Dutchess and Putnam Counties hang on the right. Completing the section is a painting of the Hudson [probably from the 1860's] by Anna Young of Marlborough.
Several other items have yet to be hung: three small mid-1850's lithographs [by Charles Magnus] of Buffalo, Albany and Troy, "The Roundhouse," a lithograph by Roland Mousseau of Rondout [1934] and a very interesting painting by Nicholas Luisi of the Railroad Bridge at Rondout [1921]. In an adjoining room are another 25 paintings, documents, maps, lithographs and broadsides.
