Men in the Young Republic

I have been a bit remiss in keeping this blog up-to-date with announcements of good print exhibitions, both in the physical and virtual worlds. Luckily, there is a fine, new online exhibit which I can call to your attention.


This is the American Antiquarian Society's exhibit, Men in the Young Republic. The AAS has a number of excellent exhibits on their web site, including the terrific Beauty, Virtue and Vice: Images of Women in Nineteenth-Century American Prints and this new exhibit maintains the high quality of the others.


The theme of the exhibit is a look at the depiction of American men and their world in popular prints from the first half century of the United States. There are sections on their home life, occupations, associations, fashions and recreations. The exhibit was curated by Sally Pierce, curator of prints and photographs at the Boston Athenaeum and editor of the American Historical Print Collectors Society's journal, Imprint.

Sally was recently interviewed for the AHPCS's News Letter about some of issues involved with online exhibitions. Excerpts from this interview follows (note that if you join the AHPCS, you would get both the newsletter and journal with your membership...):


News Letter (NL): How did you translate your selections [of prints for the exhibition] for a web audience--was it different?
Sally Pierce (SP): The process was a little different in preparing for the web....With physical space all elements come into play--size, harmony, orientation, color and style, while in the online space, you have different considerations. One they they have in common is attention to the condition of the items; there were some items I wanted to include, but the condition was so poor that it would not make for a good representation. This is especially true online as you want viewers to be attracted to the images enough to come and see them in person.


NL: Physical exhibits are noted for their abiity to inspire--did you keep this in mind for views?
SP: One exciting thing about online exhibitions is that, as a curator, you are freed from physical constraints of size--everything is equalized on the screen. So a large print and a book illustration can be displayed at the same dimensions. I believe this has an impact.


NL: As you have worked in galleries and museums, what challenges do you feel there are when moving exhibitions online?
SP: Well, for one you are looking at a surrogate of the item--which is great for getting your point across--but what you lose when not looking at a physical object is the connoisseurship of knowing different mediums, feels, tones etc. If one wants to be an art historian or a collector, the online environment does not move you forward enough to develop essential skills; or if you are an historian, it doesn't necessarily help you to envision the actual object. I'm not arguing that the web doesn't equal information, but to gain a deeper understanding, you need the object. On the flip side, the web presents the opportunity to bring people in to see your collection and online exhibitions can be great advertising.

False portraits of U.S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant was probably, after Abraham Lincoln, the most often portrayed Civil War figure in prints of the time. Grant began the war as an obscure Union officer in the western theater, but his victory at Fort Donelson, February 15-16, 1862, brought Grant to the consciousness of the American public, the beginning of a hero status which would reach full flower with the fall of Vicksburg.

It seems appropriate to do a posting today, the 150th anniversary of the capture of Fort Donelson, about the interesting history of some early portrait prints of Grant.


At the beginning of the war, Grant wore his beard in a long, wild manner. A photograph, taken in October 1861 in Cairo, Illinois, shows this shaggy image, Grant depicted in his colonel’s uniform complete with ostrich feathers in his cap. After his first action at Belmont, Grant’s wife, Julia, joined him in camp and was horrified by his wild and wooly appearance. She told him in no uncertain terms that she “did not like the length of his beard,” so Grant forthwith had it clipped close to preserve marital harmony.

Grant’s victories at Forts Henry and Donelson, followed by Shiloh, led to a great curiosity on the part of the American public as to what this new Union hero looked like. The only image available of the general at this time was the photograph taken in Cairo, so this long-bearded Grant appeared in many prints of the time, even though by then he was close-shaved.

To add to this confusion, there was a photograph taken about the same time in Cairo that somewhat looked like Grant. This image is said to be of a beef contractor named William Grant, who resembled U.S. Grant, at least in his hirsute appearance. Either through actual misunderstanding or intentionally, this non-U.S. Grant photograph was used as the basis for a number of prints of the general, appearing both in the illustrated newspapers of the day and also in engravings.

Indeed, most of the first printed portraits of Grant were based on this erroneous image, including a cover illustration in Harper’s Weekly on March 8, 1862 and a steel engraving dated March 22, 1862, both issued shortly after the capture of Fort Donelson.


Eventually, new photographs of the close-shaved general appeared and these then were used as the basis of later prints. Still, for much of the early part of the war, the public's notion of what Grant looked like was based on this erroneous image Indeed, Harper’s Weekly continued to use this mistaken image to as late as 1864. Supposedly, Grant's officers found this amusing, but no record mentions what William Grant thought of his undeserved fame.

Currier & Ives sizes

One of the most common ways to spot a Currier & Ives reproduction is that the size is wrong. While there are some reproductions that are made to the same size as the originals, by far most Currier & Ives copies are the wrong size. This is an important point, but it also brings up the general topic of sizes as related to Currier & Ives, the subject of this posting.


The first thing to know about Currier & Ives sizes is that they are usually, and should always be given for just the images themselves, not including the margins nor the title area, and the vertical size is given first. The primary reason for this is that the “standard” reference listing Currier & Ives prints, Frederic A. Conningham’s Currier & Ives Prints. An Illustrated Check List gives the sizes in this way. Ever since it was first issued in 1949, this work lists the sizes of Currier & Ives prints (where they are given-—not all prints have their size indicated) “exclusive of margins.”

As Conningham's book became the standard reference for collectors and dealers from its first issue, and to some extent remains so today, it makes sense that those who work with Currier & Ives prints have followed Conningham in the way he gives measurements.

There are other reasons to do this as well. Gale Research’s listing of the prints (Currier & Ives. A Catalogue Raisonne) does not follow Conningham, but gives the vertical size as including the text below the image. This problematic, not only because it creates a discrepancy between the two reference books, but more importantly because the text below the image is sometimes trimmed, especially where there is a small copyright line below the title. This makes it impossible to check the size compared to the listing. This is as opposed to Conningham's measurements, for the image is much less often trimmed. And, of course, as the margins of many prints are trimmed at least somewhat, giving the measurements of the full sheet of paper would be practically useless.

Interestingly, however, in one way the Conningham measurements are not usually followed today, viz. in the measurement of the prints in sixteenths of inches. It makes sense to measure in inches, for these are quintessential American prints and so an American measurement should be used. However, many dealers and collectors measure only to the nearest eight of an inch. First off, Conningham used the notation, e.g., 8.4 to indicate 8 4/16th, rather than the more standard 8 1/4, but beyond this there is an even more fundamental reason not to use sixteenths of an inch.


That is that the sizes of original prints actually vary by a fair bit. There are a number of reasons for this. One would be what paper was used and how it was prepared for printing, as different lots of paper would respond differently over time. Then the most common is that paper expands or contracts over time, depending on how it was treated, whether it got wet, was stored in a humid environment and so forth. Thus the image drawn on the stone might be 8 1/4 tall, but the image on the paper today can vary from this either by being smaller or larger, the former being more common.

There is also the fact that Currier & Ives are known to have used different stones to make the same print. In order to be able to run off a lot of the prints, they would sometimes have two or more stones of the same image going at the same time. In some of these cases there are noticeable differences in the images, but in others the images were essentially the same. These duplicate stones were made using a transfer process and in doing this, the size of the image on the stones could vary somewhat.

So to be as precise as 1/16th of an inch doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. Whenever one measures a Currier & Ives print, one should allow some variation in the size. How much is hard to say. Certainly an inch is too much, but for a large folio prints I would think upwards of about 3/8th inch difference from the “recorded” size would be acceptable if all other indications are that the print is an original. (Generally there will be more variation on the longer side than the shorter side).

As I indicated above, Conningham does not give the exact size of many of the prints. He does, however, always give a size category: “V.S.” for “very small,” “S” for small, “M” for medium, and “L” for large. Thus it is that dealers and collectors almost always will categorize Currier & Ives prints as being either “very small folio,” “small folio,” “medium folio,” and “large folio.”

Interestingly, the Currier & Ives firm itself never used these designations. I am not sure who first used these categories, but Conningham admits that he gives them “for convenience.” It is certainly true that most Currier & Ives prints were done either in a “small folio” size of about 8 1/2 x 12 1/2 or in a very large size, bigger than about 14 by 20, but really it is simply a convention to put all the prints into these four categories. There is quite a difference in the sizes within each group, and this sometimes leads to differences of opinion over, for instance, whether a print is a largish small folio or a smallish medium folio.

For what it is worth, Conningham says that a very small folio print is up to 7 x 9, a small folio is approximately 8 1/2 x 12 1/2, a medium is between about 9 x 14 to 14 x 20, and a large folio is over 14 x 20. One oddity is that Gale Research’s listing accepts these measurements from Conningham, even though their measuring system it totally different! As they are using the text in the size, they should either have increased the vertical sizes of their categories or have said that their size categories used only the image size. However, as I indicated, I think Gale Research got the whole measuring thing wrong from the beginning.


What my shop does is give both the category size and the size of the image itself. We have also followed this measuring system for other prints and maps, though there is less universal acceptance of this for other types of prints. Still, for Currier & Ives it is best to know and follow these conventions. It will help if you want to describe your print to someone else, it is the standard convention followed by most dealers who regularly deal with the prints, and it is the easiest way to check if you have an original or not.

For more on Currier & Ives, feel free to visit us at the Philadelphia Print Shop West.

Shaping the Trans-Mississippi West: 1830-39

As described in the previous blog from this series, by 1830, three relatively small political entities (two states and a territory) had been created in the original Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The remainder of the purchase lands, now called the Missouri Territory, was mostly occupied by Indian tribes. Some of these Native Americans had been located in the trans-Mississippi West for a long time, but many had been pushed west relatively recently by the advance of EuroAmericans from the east coast ever westward. Still, there were significant Indian populations east of the Mississippi, especially in the southeastern part of the United States.

From the beginning of their settlement in the southeast, EuroAmericans saw the five “civilized tribes” (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole) as impediments in the way of their desire for land. Beginning in the second decade of the nineteenth century, military and political pressure was brought by the U.S. government to get those tribes to give up their land in the southeast in exchange for new lands in the Missouri Territory. By the 1820s, much of the Indian land in the southeast was under government control, though few Native Americans had actually moved across the Mississippi.

In 1830, Andrew Jackson pushed the Indian Removal Act through Congress in order to enable to government to "remove" these tribes from the southeast to the trans-Mississippi West. This was supposed to be voluntary, but even more pressure was put on the tribes to accept this removal. Over the next decade, these tribes signed treaties or were forced by military action to move west, and by the end of the decade, most Native Americans from the southeast had moved across the Mississippi.

In order to try to protect the Native Americans in their new lands, and of course also to keep them contained, the Indian Intercourse Act was passed in 1834, setting aside for the Indians "…all that part of the United States west of the Mississippi and not within the states of Missouri and Louisiana, or the territory of Arkansas…". That is, essentially all of the Missouri Territory, encompassing the original Louisiana Purchase excepting the three political entitles which had been created in the previous decade.


Most of the land granted to the “removed” Indians was in the southern region, to the west of Arkansas, though there were many other tribes in the more northern parts of the territory. Replaying the previous history of the relationship between the U.S. government and Native Americans, however, this vast Indian territory was regularly whittled down in size through the rest of the century. For instance, just two years after the Indian Intercourse Act, the Sac & Fox tribes were convinced to give back the lands between the state of Missouri and the Missouri river, moving the northwestern border of the state to the west.

The original “Northwest Territory” comprised those lands west of Pennsylvania, north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi. By the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, this territory was to be broken up into states and smaller territories as the population increased.

In 1818, when Indiana and Illinois were made states, the remainder of the original Northwest Territory became the Michigan Territory (essentially today’s Michigan, Wisconsin and the eastern part of Minnesota).

In 1834, the Michigan Territory was expanded to include those parts of the Louisiana Purchase north of the state of Missouri and east of the Missouri River, that is, including what today are the rest of Minnesota, Iowa and the eastern parts of the Dakota’s.

In 1836, Arkansas was admitted as the twenty-fifth state. As the thirteenth slave state, this gave slavery proponents an advantage in Congress, so it was decided that a new, free state of Michigan would be admitted (which it was in January 1837). The entire Michigan Territory was too large to be admitted as a state, so in the summer of 1836, the western part of the territory (today’s Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and the eastern parts of Dakota) was broken off as the Wisconsin Territory.

Just two years later, the parts of the Wisconsin Territory that were west of the Mississippi were broken off as the Iowa Territory. This new territory, then, encompassed all the lands between the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers from the state of Missouri north to the Canadian border. The Wisconsin Territory was reduced to just those parts east of the Mississippi, that had been part of the original Northwest Territory, a situation which continued until 1848 when Wisconsin was made a state with its current borders.

Thus, in 1839, the trans-Mississippi United States consisted of three states hugging the river—Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri, the territory of Iowa, lying between the Missouri and Mississippi, and a large Indian territory lying between these states and territory and the continental divide. Besides this, a vast area north of Mexico and west of the continental divide, called by the Americans the Oregon Country, was in theory jointly administered by Great Britain and the United States. The story of that region will be the subject of the next blog on shaping the trans-Mississippi west.

Getting an appraisal

I get a lot of queries about how to get a print or map appraised or whether one is "worth having appraised." The Philadelphia Print Shop's web site does have a page about appraisals, but it seems like it is worth going over some of the issues in this blog.

First, I should explain that while I give "free appraisals" on Antique Roadshow, this is a special circumstance. I do this because it is fun, it gets my shop lots of good publicity, and it helps spread information about and create interest in antiques, including prints and maps. Otherwise, I do not give free appraisals, because I am a professional appraiser. Since I charge clients for appraisals, it isn't fair to turn around and give out the same information for free (except in the case of the Roadshow).

The main issue, though, is why get an appraisal? I think in most cases where people are asking for an appraisal, they really just want some idea of what the item is worth. I can understand this, but I feel that even if I am giving only an off-the-cuff dollar value, this is still an appraisal and there should be at least some charge in order to make it fair to all our clients. I do offer general "ballpark valuations," but these are not actual values, but rather a general idea of whether a print is of just "decorative" value, or "moderate" value, or "significant" value, etc. If an actual dollar value is involved, then it is really an appraisal, or at least what we call a "POV" (professional opinion of value), for which the charges are less.

So, when is it appropriate to pay to get a dollar value? Just because you are curious? In most cases this doesn't warrant actually spending money. If you are really curious, maybe a POV is appropriate, but otherwise, you can perhaps satisfy your curiosity by searching on the web to see if you can find your print/map or something similar. There are also books of price records, which some libraries have, so if you put in a bit of work, you might be able to get an idea without having to pay for an appraisal.

Probably the most common reason I get asked for an "appraisal" is because someone wants to sell the print/map and wants to get an idea of what to sell it for. In general it doesn't make sense to pay for an appraisal before you try to sell an item. First, you might not gain enough advantage from the appraisal to recover the cost of the appraisal. Secondly, even if you ask for an appraisal indicating a wholesale price, each dealer figures wholesale prices differently depending on the nature of their business, their needs, cash flow, etc. Thus it is very difficult to come up with a wholesale price that would apply to a general range of dealers. Finally, as a matter of ethics, a dealer should not both give an appraisal and make an offer (as that is a conflict of interest), so if you get an appraisal, you are eliminating one possible purchaser.

One way to get an idea of what to sell something for is to ask a dealer what he would offer for the item, or to ask an auction house what they think it would bring at auction. It is not, in my opinion, fair to do this unless you honestly might sell the item to the dealer or through the auction house, but if the offer/estimate is too low, you certainly do not need to sell the item. If you intend to sell it yourself, then set a minimum price that you are willing to take and let the market decide if that is reasonable. If you are afraid of selling too cheaply, then maybe you ought to deal with a professional dealer or auction house.

Another fairly common reason to ask for an appraisal is to get an idea of how the print should be treated. Really, no matter what a print or map is worth, if you do not treat it well, it will not survive, so if you like it, you should treat it well (museum quality framing, etc.) so it will survive, no matter what it is worth. This is also why I will give out our ballpark valuations, so the owner will have some idea of what they have.

As for estate, tax or insurance reasons, then it is really best to get a real appraisal and pay for it. If there is ever a question, having an appraisal from a professional appraiser will give you a solid foundation to maintain the value you have assigned the object.

Chon-Man-I-Case, portrait of a chief

In the nineteenth century, Native American names were not written down by the Indians themselves, so the names as documented by Euro-Americans were either phonetic approximations or nicknames used as a matter of convenience. Thus it is that the Oto chief pictured above had his name written as “Chon-Man-I-Case,” in this print from Thomas McKenney’s History of the Indian Tribes of North America, but also as “Shaumonekusse,” which is the spelling that James Hall preferred in his biography. This chief was also called the Prairie Wolf and L’Ietan, the latter name used by the French perhaps because of an exploit he had against the Ietan tribe.

The Oto tribe originally came from what is today Wisconsin, but by the late eighteenth century had settled along the Missouri and Platte Rivers in today’s Nebraska. It was there that Shaumonekusse was born about 1785 and there that the tribe was located on the map which accompanied McKenney’s volume. When Stephen Long’s expedition passed through that area in 1819, Shaumonekusse was one of the warriors who described to the exploring party his martial exploits, which involved taking coup and stealing horses from many other tribes.

Just a couple years later, in 1821-22, a large delegation of plains Indians, from the Pawnee, Sauk, Fox, Sioux, Miami, Menominee, Chippewa and Oto tribes, went to Washington to meet with government officials, including President James Monroe. This was part of the government’s policy of both honoring and impressing Native American leaders so that they would be more malleable in making treaties (and giving up their rights). Shaumonekusse, though only a “half chief” (that is a minor chief) at the time, was part of the delegation along with one of his wives, Hayne Hudjihini, or Eagle of Delight.

At this time, Thomas McKenney was head of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. McKenney was a champion of American Indians and fought throughout his tenure to preserve something of their culture, which he recognized as an integral part of the history of America. Towards this end he started a collection of Indian memorabilia for the government and took advantage of the visit of this large delegation to have a number of the visitor's portraits painted.

McKenney convinced some of the members of the delegation, including both Shaumonekusse and Hayne Hudjihini, to go to the studio of the leading Washington portrait painter Charles Bird King, to sit for their portraits. This was the beginning of the government's Indian portrait gallery, which grew considerably in size during McKenney’s tenure. After McKenney was dismissed from his position, he borrowed the original paintings in order to produce illustrations for his planned History.

After many ups and downs, lasting over a decade, this monumental work was completed containing 120 prints (all but three portraits) and biographies, written by James Hall, of many of the individuals pictured. Lithographic copies of both Shaumonekusse's and Hayne Hudjihini’s portraits were included. It turned out to be a good thing that McKenney undertook this project and produced these copies, for in 1865, a fire at the Smithsonian destroyed almost all the original paintings.

Shaumonekusse’s biography in the History, says of him that he “was distinguished early in life as a daring, active and successful warrior.” And according to Hall, he rose to his position as chief, not through heredity, but “gradually by his own merits.”

An interesting story, of which there are a number of versions, tells how Shaumonekusse and his brother, Blue Eyes, fought each other over ownership of some ponies, during which Blue Eyes bit off the end of his brother’s nose! Shaumonekusse retreated to his lodging to recover and try to cool off, but in the morning he was still furious, telling his brother that he was going to kill him, an act which he shortly thereafter carried out. Though Shaumonekusse was said to be distraught by this, according to Hall it was this act of revenge, which was widely approved by his tribe, which led to Shaumonekusse’s rise to being a full chief.


The portrait of Shaumonekusse shows a proud warrior, wearing an impressive bear-claw necklace and headdress with bison horns, both indicating his great prowess. He also hears a presidential medal, with Monroe’s likeness on it, given to him when he visited the president.


The portrait of Shaumonekusse was one of the first prints produced for the McKenney History, some time around 1830. As the production of the History ran its convoluted way towards completion in 1844, a number of portraits, including this one, were redrawn on stone and reissued. Usually the later images were a bit more “polished” or Europeanized, as can be seen by comparing the image above the previous paragraph, published in 1836 by E.C. Biddle, with the one just above, published in 1838 by F.W. Greenough.

Library Company of Philadelphia Print Department

The last few months have been very busy, with a number of antique shows and other travel (I am off on Sunday for the Theta Show in Houston), so my blog postings have fallen off. I just got an email that announced a new on-line exhibit which I thought I should take the time to pass on...

One of my first blogs was about the wonderful Library Company of Philadelphia. I love it here in Denver, but I do miss some things from the East Coast. Its wonderful institutions being one of the main things I miss and the Library Company is at the head of the list of these institutions.

The Library Company always had prints, but it wasn't until 1971 that they appointed Stephanie Munsing as the first Curator of Prints and Photographs. The new on-line exhibition celebrates the 40 years of this department. It demonstrates better than any remarks I can make what a great department this is. Take a look!