Mar 20 at 10:30 AM - Sale 2697 -

Sale 2697 - Lot 17

Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
(ABOLITION.) Cabinet card portrait of the Rev. Henry Highland Garnet. Albumen photograph, 5½ x 4 inches, on original mount with photographer's inked stamp on verso; minor wear including pinholes and 1-inch crease in lower mount; uncaptioned. Brooklyn, NY: Hargrave Portraits, circa 1876-1878
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Additional Details

A portrait of the important abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet (1815-1882), who supported armed rebellion and was viewed as a radical by even ardent abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. His 1865 sermon on the passage of the 13th Amendment was the first address by an African-American to Congress. He went to Liberia as ambassador in 1881, and died there the following year.

The Irish-born photographer William Gillard Hargrave (circa 1846-1926) established his studio at the corner of Myrtle and Bedford in Brooklyn in 1876, per his inked stamp. He purchased a new studio at 136 Fulton Street in 1878, per the 26 December 1878 Brooklyn Eagle. Rev. Garnet lived in Manhattan during this period, but did have ties to Brooklyn. In December 1875 he married his second wife Sarah Tompkins Garnet, who was born and raised in Brooklyn and had previously taught at the African Free School of Williamsburg. Their December 1875 wedding was held in Brooklyn, and her sister Susan McKinney Steward was a prominent Brooklyn physician.

We have traced no other examples of this portrait. We are aware of only one other Garnet photograph at auction, in a Swann sale on 7 May 2020, lot 60.

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