?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(AMERICAN WRITER) Portrait of Walt Whitman (1819-1892). By Frederick Gutekunst (1831-1917). Silver copy print, the image measuring 6¼x4¾ inches (15.9x12.1 cm.), the mount 8x5½ inches (20.3x14 cm.), with the Culver Pictures stamp and barcode on mount verso. 1880; printed 1920s
Provenance: The Culver Archive
This photograph appears in the 1889 Leaves of Grass (pocket edition). Whitman asked Horace Traubel about this photo: "Do you think it glum? severe? I have had that suspicion but most people won't hear to it." When Traubel dissented, Whitman said, "I hope your view is correct: I don't want to figure anywhere as misanthropic, sour, doubtful: as a discourager—as a putter-out of lights" (Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Saturday, November 3, 1888). Whitman records in his daybooks receiving photos from Gutekunst in March 1880.
