Rare Book Monthly

Articles - June - 2019 Issue

Reconstructing History in Paint

At some point, for serious institutions and collectors the reimagining of the past becomes essential to understanding and explaining it.  Today’s assumptions are often, if not always, very different from what was reality in those now receding decades. 

 

Re-imaging is also fraught with issues.  The quality of the research and the balanced evaluation of underlying resources becomes essential to separating what we think from what reality really was.  In every case such efforts are interpretative.

 

This issue is being directly addressed in a series of paintings by the gifted artist, L. F. Tantillo, who is reimaging the mid-Hudson Valley in the 19th century.

 

The first painting in this 8 painting series was issued in 2018, a reconstruction of what was the most significant fire in the history of New Paltz at the school that would in time become the State University at New Paltz.  The 1906 fire destroyed one institution from whose ashes a new one, less than a mile away, on a larger campus emerged in 1909, to become a gem in the New York State university system today.  An image of that painting is attached.

 

The second painting, now complete, reimagines Rondout, New York circa 1883.  This once separate community, now incorporated into Kingston, Ulster’s county seat, portrays its waterfront at the confluence of the Rondout Creek, Wallkill and Hudson Rivers.  The Delaware & Hudson Canal, then in decline, empties its cargo barges arriving from the coal fields in Pennsylvania onto larger ships at Rondout to be towed south to New York City.  In the distance, carried across on a bridge running north and south, railroads, successors to the declining canal system, spring into precarious life, their glory to be brief for the car and truck within 20 years would begin to move passengers and cargo into cars and trucks.

 

Meanwhile, preparing to depart, the Mary Powell, then Queen of the Hudson River                                             steamboats, prepares to carry passengers and cargo to New York City in a desperate, but ultimately losing battle with the railroads that would carry the cargos and passengers there and far beyond to distant places faster and at lower cost.

 

The evolution of transportation would play out in Ulster County as it would across the country, battles fought to advance progress, prestige and money literally in real time as fortunes were made and lost.  These things happened elsewhere but, in Ulster, they were determinative for as their fortunes rose and fell, so too did the prosperity of the region.

 

Ulster County, was at that moment in 1883, for a brief second in the clock of cosmic time, very close to the center of the New England economic revolution.  It wouldn’t last, but, in its moment, it was grand.  This painting reminds us that success is fleeting, even pyrrhic.

 

The third painting, of 8 in this series now under consideration, may capture the fading glory of Poughkeepsie as seen from the then wonder of the world, the immense Hudson River Railroad Bridge around the turn of the 20th century when trollies from New Paltz could reach the bridge to carry passengers across to Poughkeepsie.  Alternatively, a scene capturing the epic grandeur of Lake Awosting on the Shawangunk Mountain ridge line or a moment-in-time perspective of the region’s historically most important surviving enterprise, Lake Mohonk Mountain House, are being considered.  In time it is hoped that all these and three other perspectives will be painted, to in time become The Ulster County Cycle.

Rare Book Monthly

  • Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A RUTH BADER GINSBURG BEADED JUDICIAL COLLAR. $80,000 - $120,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: ONLY KNOWN COPY OF THE ONLY BOOK BY THE REMARKABLE EVE ADAMS. $8,000 - $12,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A COMPLETE RUN OF VISIONAIRE MAGAZINE THROUGH 2010. $6,000 - $9,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: LAW REVIEW OFFPRINT SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY RUTH BADER GINSBURG. $3,000 - $5,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: META REBNER'S WORKING SCRIPT OF THE LOVED ONE. $1,500 - $2,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A KATHY GROVE PORTRAIT OF CYNDI LAUPER FOR THE FEBRUARY 1989 DETAILS COVER. $800 - $1,200
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A PLASTIC COAT BY MILLIE DAVID FEATURED IN SOHO NEWS STYLE SECTION, FROM THE COLLECTION OF ANNIE FLANDERS. $500 - $700
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A RUTH BADER GINSBURG JEWELRY BOX. $600 - $900
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A SET OF JONI MITCHELL LYRICS FOR "IF I HAD A HEART." $2,000 - $3,000
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    Catalogue 198 just published
    19th Century Shop. Darwin and Wallace, first printing of the first paper on natural selection
    19th Century Shop. Shakespeare’s Poems, first collected edition
    19th Century Shop. Walt Whitman portrait inscribed with a Leaves of Grass poem
    19th Century Shop. Major Elizabeth Barrett Browning manuscript notebook
    19th Century Shop. Spock's Baby Book, original MS
    19th Century Shop. Cellarius, Harmonia Macrocosmica, the great celestial atlas
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    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [RUTH, George Herman “Babe” (1895-1948)]. Signed photograph. Circa 1930s. 191 x 248 mm. $1,500 to $2,500.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: HARRISON, Benjamin. Document signed (“Benj Harrison”) as governor of Virginia, certifying the service of Daniel Cumbo, a Black Revolutionary soldier. $6,000 to $9,000.
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    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: FIRST PRINTING OF LINCOLN’S IMMORTAL GETTYSBURG ADDRESS. $4,000 to $6,000.
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    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: NEWLY DISCOVERED FIRST PRINTING OF "WITH MALICE TOWARDS NONE... " FROM THE ONLY NEWSPAPER ACTUALLY ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE IN LINCOLN’S SECOND INAUGURAL PROCESSION. $4,000 to $8,000.
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    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: EDISON, Thomas. Patent for Edison’s Improvements on the Electric-Light, No. 219,628. [Washington, D.C.: U.S. Patent Office], 16 September 1879. $2,000 to $3,000.
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    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: [Langland (William)]. The vision of Pierce Plowman, nowe the seconde time imprinted..., Roberte Crowley, 1550. £8,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: [Shakespeare (William)]. [Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies], second folio edition, [by Tho.Cotes, for Robert Allot], [1632]. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Bible, Czech Biblia Bohemica, first complete Bible printed in the Czech vernacular, Prague, August 1488. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Auctions
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    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Shabthai Tzvi.- Collection of four printed and illustrated broadsides detailing the appearance, rise and fall of the false messiah, Shabthai Tzvi, Augsburg, 1666-67. £40,000 to £60,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Leaf from the Beauvais Missal, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment, [Northern France (perhaps Beauvais or Amiens)], [fourteenth century (c.1310)]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Aubrey (John). [Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme], manuscript in English, Latin and Greek, [c. 1693]. £30,000 to £50,000.
    Forum Auctions
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    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Poems on Various Occasions, first edition, Harriet Maltby's copy, Newark, Printed by S. & J. Ridge, 1807. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Tolkien (J.R.R.) The Hobbit, first edition, second impression with dust-jacket, 1937 [but 1938]. £7,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Blake (William).- Thornton (Robert John). The Pastorals of Virgil, 2 vol., engraved plates by William Blake, 1821. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: America.- Mount (William J.) & Thomas Page. The English Pilot…, [bound with] The Fourth Book, describing The West Indies Navigation from Hudson's-Bay to the River Amazones, 1721. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Oldfield (Henry Ambrose), Rajman Singh Chitrakar & others. An album of 160 photographs and 13 original artworks, (1833-1919), [c. 1850s-1880s]. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Audubon (John James) [and William MacGillivray]. Ornithological Biography…, 5 vol., first edition, presentation copy inscribed by Audubon, Edinburgh, 1831-49 [i.e. 1831-39]. £10,000 to £15,000.
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    Modern First Editions
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    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Winston Churchill. The Second World War. Set of First-Edition Volumes. 6,000 USD
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    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Ian Fleming. Live and Let Die. First Edition. 9,500 USD
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