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• Issue #229
• Article

Francis Frith (British, 1822-1898), Street View in Cairo, 1858, albumen print (lot 132, $2,500-3,500)

On Friday, January 27th, Skinner will present its winter Prints & Photographs auction in Boston, beginning at noon EST. The selection of fine photographs on offer features a range of 19th- and 20th-century works by such masters as Auguste Salzmann, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Alfred Stieglitz, Irving Penn, Nan Goldin and others.

Among the highlights is a group of works being sold to benefit the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA). The 19th-century offerings include two large-scale albumen prints of a Cairo street view and an Egyptian landscape by Francis Frith (lot 132, $2,500-3,500; lot 133, $3,000-5,000); several Oscar Rejlander figure studies (lots 137 and 138, $800-1,200 each); 45 River Thames views of locks, bridges, and weirs by Victor Albert Prout (lot 139, $1,500-2,500) and a selection of Eadweard Muybridge Animal Locomotion collotypes.

Outstanding 20th-century lots from the PMA include Alfred Stieglitz’s The Two Poplars, Lake George with a print of the Dying Chestnut Tree, both from 1934 and mounted back to back (lot 162, $8,000-12,000), and two images made on Cape Cod by Dorothy Norman, a Philadelphia native and generous support of the museum (lot 164, $800-1,200).

Irving Penn (American, 1917-2009), Marcel Duchamp, New York, 1948, printed 1979, platinum/palladium print mounted to aluminum (lot 181, $15,000-25,000)

The sale also features a number of important 20th-century works from private collections, including an exquisite platinum/palladium print from 1979 of a corner portrait of Marcel Duchamp taken by Irving Penn in 1948 (lot 181, $15,000-25,000), an early print of Manuel Álvarez Bravo’s mesmerizing El Ensueño (The Daydream) (lot 159, $5,000-7,000), a classic Chicago street scene by Ray K. Metger (lot 180, $2,000-3,000) and several portraits of Albert Einstein in his Princeton, NJ, home by Lotte Jacobi (lot 168, $1,500-2,500; lot 169, $3,000-5,000).

Also on the block are four works by André Kertész, including a Budapest street scene from 1914, printed 1950s (lot 152, $1,500-2,500), Distortion 166, 1933, printed 1950s and part of a series of optical experiments featuring female nudes (lot 161, $5,000-7,000) and several 1960s city views (lot 182, $1,000-2,000; lot 183, $2,000-3,000).

Rounding out the offerings are several contemporary works: a haunting 1993 landscape from Sally Mann’s Mother Land series (lot 196, $8,000-12,000); Nan Goldin’s Trees by the River, Munich from 1994 (lot 197, $6,000-8,000); and 128 Details from a Picture (Halifax, 1978) II, an interesting portfolio of eight offset lithographs by Gerhard Richter (lot 199, $8,000-12,000).

Additional photographers represented include: Berenice Abbott, Antonio Beato, Ilse Bing, Margaret Bourke-White, Adolphe Braun (attributed to), Francis Bruguière, Julia Margaret Cameron, Paul Caponigro, Walter Chapell, Claude-Joseph Désiré Charnay (attributed to), Carl Chiarenza, Edward Sheriff Curtis, Andre de Dienes, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Walker Evans, Peter Fink, Ernst Haas, Jan Henle, Frank Jay Haynes (attributed to), Gus Kayafas, Michael Kenna, George Platt Lynes, Man Ray, Charles Marville, Barbara Morgan, Olivia Parker, Roger Parry, William B. Post, Albert Renger-Patzsch, James Robertson, Robertson and Beato, Willy Ronis, Sherril Schell, W. Eugene Smith, Eva Watson-Schütze, Todd Webb, Weegee, Brett Weston, Edward Weston and David Wilkie Wynfield.

The auction preview will take place at 63 Park Plaza, Boston, with viewing times as follows:
Wednesday, January 25: 12pm-5pm
Thursday, January 26: 12pm-8pm
Friday, January 27: 9am-10am

For more information regarding the auction, please contact Michelle Lamunière, Fine Photographs Specialist, at 1-508-970-3264 or photographs@skinnerinc.com. The auction can also be viewed online at: http://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/fine-photographs-2977b/. To order a printed catalogue, please email subscriptions@skinnerinc.com, or call 1-508-970-3240.