?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
(ABRAHAM LINCOLN.) Group of retouched photographs of five Lincoln conspirators, used by Alexander Gardner for cartes-de-visite. Retouched albumen prints, each about 7 x 6 inches on original cards, trimmed within margins; framing nail stains on verso, each with pencil inscriptions on verso dating from circa 1869, 3 with remnants of original backing paper and second inscriptions over the first, mat toning to O'Laughlin only, a bit of mat adhesive remnants at the edges of Atzerodt and Arnold. [Washington, 1865]
In April 1865, the great Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner was commissioned to photograph the surviving Lincoln assassination conspirators aboard the USS Montauk and Saugus at the Washington Navy Yard. Gardner found it necessary to have them retouched for distribution as cartes-de-visite. Offered here are the original retouched photographs which were reproduced for distribution under Gardner's copyright in 1865. The retouching has been attributed to Washington artist Eleazer Hutchinson Miller (1831-1921), who did at least one other project for Gardner during this period (an original cartoon titled "The Devil To Pay" in 1866).
This lot includes the original retouched photographs of conspirators Samuel Arnold, George Atzerodt, Michael O'Laughlen, Lewis Payne [Powell], and Edward Spangler.
