Bloomsbury Auctions

2009-11-13

Capture the Imagination: Original Illustration & Fine Illustrated Books

Tom Feelings

Bloomsbury Auctions announces our annual holiday sale of original illustrations and fine illustrated books on Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 2:00pm. The sale will showcase important works from the Golden Age of Illustration to the present day. It will commence with the artistic estate of award winning African American artist Tom Feelings - a native of Brooklyn, New York. The late Tom Feelings worked as a freelance illustrator of children’s books for over thirty years. Throughout his career, Feelings received numerous awards and honors for his outstanding portrayals of Africans and African Americans. Among the highlights of the sale is the entire collection of Feelings’ seminal 1996 work The Middle Passage ($250,000-$350,000), Caldecott Honor Book Moja Means One (1972), Now Sheba Sings the Song (1987) and Soul Looks Back in Wonder (1994).The sale will also offer the artist’s personal collection of paintings, drawings, fine prints and sculptures by such prominent African American artists as Don Nelson, Paul Goodnight, Karen Johnson, Joel Gresham, Leroy Clarke and Brian Collier.

The Middle Passage ,1996

The second session will include a drawing for a book cover by Aubrey Beardsley ($9,000-$10,000), John R. Neill’s painting of Cap’n Bill as a merman ($10,000-$15,000) from L. Frank Baum’s The Sea Fairies, Willy Pogány’s watercolor for A Midsummer's Nights Dream ($12,000-$15,000) and Gustaf Tenggren’s early illustration of Trolls ($10,000-$12,000). Among the other important modern illustrators are Caldecott winners Arnold Lobel, Uri Shulevitz, Beni Montresor, Evaline Ness, Richard Egielski, Paul Zelinsky, Trina Schart Hyman and Leonard Weisgard. Some of the treasures that will be auctioned are Maurice Sendak’s original designs for the Wild Things Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon ($40,000-$50,000) and watercolors by William Steig for the original Shrek! ($15,000-$20,000) and Sylvester and the Magic Pebble ($15,000-$20,000). Two time Caldecott winners Leo and Diane Dillon are represented by works from Ashanti to Zulu ($15,000-$17,000), The Sorcerer’s Apprentice ($10,000-$12,000) and other award-winning titles. There will also be watercolors, drawings and other work by Edward Ardizonne, Edward Gorey, Tomi Ungerer, Al Hirschfeld, H. A. Rey, James Marshall, Barry Moser, Charles Santore, Charles M. Schultz and Walt Disney. Fine illustrated books include rare Oz titles, a Randolph Caldecott sketchbook, the works of A. A. Milne and a privately printed edition of The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter, limited edition Rackhams and numerous autographed picture books.

Exhibition viewings are:
Saturday December 5, 10 am- 3 pm
Monday December 7, 10 am- 5 pm
Tuesday December 8, 10 am- 5 pm
Wednesday December 9, 10 am- 1 pm
Or by private appointment
 

2009-11-13

The De Orbe Novo Collection: Exploration of the New World 1492-1625

Bloomsbury Auctions is pleased to announce a significant sale that offers the rarest Americana. This collection of just 82 lots contains accounts of European explorers in the New World, all of which were printed prior to 1625. This collection of books and charts from Bruce McKinney ranks as one of the finest in private hands.

Collecting in this field really began to advance in the late 19th century when historical research into America's roots began to flower, in part inspired by the 1892 anniversary of the Columbus landing in the New World. Most of the great 19th and early 20th century book collectors Morgan, Hoe and Huntington considered early Americana to be the central pillar of book collecting in America. At that time as a collector you probably had the choice of many copies, but after WWII this rarely has been possible. For an individual starting to collect in the 1990s and to be able to accrue over 80 major books of that period is a considerable feat and this collection from Bruce Mc Kinney is truly remarkable. As he said "It was a challenge, there are only about 200 items that could fit the definition of Europeans in the New World before 1630, but one would have to have almost unlimited time and money to find them all. I have about half that and that's an achievement worth sharing."

To collect the published accounts of these European Voyages and Explorations has always been an expensive occupation, the books are all generally rare, most not appearing on the open market more than two times in any decade, and some less often than that. Bruce McKinney had the courage and finances over the last 20 years to create the collection we are offering on December 3rd at Bloomsbury, New York. He had the interest and attention to detail to search out some spectacular rarities, many hidden in the back rooms of the old post war generation of dealers such as H. P. Kraus, men for whom this field had once been one of their staple dealing areas.
Many of those who made risky crossings across the Atlantic in the 16th and early 17th centuries to explore the New World, will be familiar names, such as Columbus, Cortes, Champlain, Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake. Others in the collection, such as the great cartographer Ptolemy, might be less familiar, but all the titles in this collection are distinguished by their rarity and the importance of their content; both in text and illustrations provided readers of this works with primary accounts of the East Indies, New Spain, New France and New England.

Samuel de Champlain (1567-1635) Les Voyages du Sieur de Champlain Paris, 1613. First Edition. The Siebert copy. Estimate: $250,000-350,000

A wonderful example is Samuel de Champlain's Les Voyages (Paris: 1613), containing numerous views of the earliest settlements in French North America, depictions of Iroquois and Algonquin natives and extraordinarily accurate maps of the Eastern coast, including Cape Cod, visited by Champlain years before the Puritans arrived. While everyone might recognize Lake Champlain, few now remember that the explorer it was named after, made an astonishing 27 trips from Europe, without losing a ship, founded Quebec, encouraged French migration to Canada and established friendly ties with many of the local Indian tribes. But in addition, he meticulously recorded his endeavors, was an artistic cartographer, botanist and pioneering ethnographer. It is a key work in early American studies and rare to find at all, let alone in acceptable condition and in a contemporary binding. (Est. $250,000-350,000).

Such a fine single owner sale can only take place when a collector pursues his passion with vision and knowledge. Bruce McKinney began collecting at the age of 10 years, grew away from it and returned when a dealer remarked that European-Americana was at the time undervalued. What also appealed to the McKinney was that a truly representative collection could be formed within historic boundaries and the scope and scale of the historic importance of the material could be displayed if one were truly successful as a collector.

The De Orbe Novo Collection: Exploration of the New World 1492-1625 will be available for viewing in New York on Monday, November 30th, Tuesday, December 1st, and Wednesday, December 2nd from 9:00am to 5:00pm and by private appointment.

Please contact Richard Austin at raustin@bloomsburyauctions.com for further information.
 

2009-11-13

Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts

Petrus Stuyvesant (c. 1612-1672) Manuscript document Dated October 24, 1654

Bloomsbury Auctions announces our annual fall sale of over 400 lots of Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts including Americana. The sale begins with early manuscripts and printed material, including a rare 1564 colonial document signed by the last Dutch governor of New Amsterdam, Peter Stuyvesant, who granted lands near the “Wallabout” area on the waterfront in Brooklyn. The manuscript dated October 24, 1654 is signed in Dutch and was issued to Dutch settlers- estimate $30,000/$40,000. The early printed section includes a selection of Judaica as well as a 1st edition and inscribed copies of the 2nd and 3rd editions of Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson. Well over 100 pieces of Americana will be featured with a strong focus on the Civil War. An autograph album put together in 1864 contains signatures of President Lincoln and several members of his wartime cabinet and also includes autographs of then General and future President Ulysses S. Grant.

In a section devoted to science there is a poignant letter by Albert Einstein to a defender of Jewish refugees commenting on the “calamitous peril" facing Jews in 1939, dated June 10, 1939, estimate $10,000-$15,000. Other important English letters include one to the publisher Alfred Knopf from 1946 on the events of Hiroshima, $4000-$6000 and a very rare collection of NASA astronaut signatures collected on an Arizona trip in 1964 intended to simulate the surface of the moon. The grouping includes Buzz Aldrin, Alan Shepard, and Neil Armstrong. This collection was put together 5 years before the moon landing in 1969. The signatures on one sheet dated May 3, 1964- $7000-$10,000.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) The Raven and Other Poems First Edition, 1845

The literature section includes a fine first edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven and Other Poems 1845 -$10,000-15,000 and a group of letters from between the publisher Alfred Knopf and several authors, including Willa Cather, Eudora Welty and James Cain. Also included in this Literature section are first editions by James Joyce, including Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and the first Bodley Head edition of Ulysses. The Fine Binding section features an impressive group of extra-illustrated library sets, a large group or fore-edge painted books, embroidered and miniature books.

Exhibition viewings are:
Monday, November 16, 10am – 5pm
Tuesday, November 17, 10am – 5pm
Wednesday, November 18, 10am – 5pm
Or by private appointment