Profile bust portrait of Charles Darwin, signed by Cameron. London: Colnaghi, 1868

The great Darwin portrait, Julia Margaret Cameron’s 1868 profile of Darwin is probably the most famous photograph of a 19th-century scientist. Darwin remarked, “I like this photograph very much better than any other which has been taken of me.”

$52,000

The Original Big Tree, 32 feet diameter. Charles Weed, 1864

Mammoth albumen print (15 ½ x 20 in.), mounted.

$37,500

Original glass plate interpositive prepared by Curtis for the printing of The North American Indian. Curtis, 1924

This is a splendid original glass plate made for Edward Curtis’s The North American Indian, the greatest photographic work on Native Americans. Curtis, one of the greatest American artists of his era, was the most celebrated photographer of North American Indians.

$35,000

32 Fort Laramie Treaty Photographs. Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory, 1868

This landmark series of Alexander Gardner photographs documents the Fort Laramie Treaty conference. The Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868 guaranteed the Lakota ownership of the Black Hills in the Wyoming Territory. The treaty was signed by U.S. officials and representatives of the Arapaho, Northern Cheyenne, Crow, and the Brule, Oglala and Miniconjou Dakota. Intended to stop Indian hostilities against white settlers and miners traveling the Bozeman Trail, the treaty ended Red Cloud’s War.

$32,000

Sentinel Rock, 3270 Feet High. San Francisco, 1864

This spectacular view shows Sentinel Rock towering above a rider on horseback in a well-lit clearing.

$25,000

The Temple Mount, Jerusalem. Jerusalem, 1857

This landmark two-part view of the Temple Mount is one of the very earliest multi-part panoramic photographs of Jerusalem.

$25,000

Buildings of [the] Fair Heirs in San Francisco. Original photographs of the pre-earthquake real estate holdings of the heirs of James Graham Fair.. San Francisco, 1901-1905

A real estate tycoon’s San Francisco: this album documents approximately forty downtown San Francisco real estate holdings of the heirs of real estate, silver, and railroad magnate James Graham Fair. This album belonged to Fair’s daughter Virginia Graham Fair Vanderbilt, first wife of William K. Vanderbilt II.

$22,000

King of Siam’s State Barge. Bangkok, c. 1865

This is a magnificent two-panel view of the king’s barge on the water, with dozens of oarsmen ready to put their paddles in to the water. The king’s ornate covered throne is at the rear of the vessel. The riverbank in the background is crowded with low thatched roof buildings.

$15,000

Photographic album of Gothic architecture and proposed designs for the Royal Courts of Justice, London. Various places, 1868-70

This splendid album contains 120 fine medium and large format photographs of Gothic and High Victorian Gothic architecture.

$12,000

Catalogue of the celebrated collection of works of art and vertu known as “The Vienna Museum,” the property of Messrs. Lowenstein Brothers, of Frankfort-on-the-Main. London: Christie, Manson & Woods, 1860

This important volume is “the earliest photographically illustrated auction catalogue” (Gernsheim, Incunabula, 122). It contains 36 photographs on salted paper by Hermann Emden of Frankfurt.

$12,000