?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
A VISUAL DIARY OF THE CIVIL WAR (CIVIL WAR.) Dana, Robert S. Group of 15 drawings and watercolors by a regimental physician in the Civil War. Ink and wash drawings with occasional color highlights; various sizes, ranging from 3 x 4 inches to 5 x 8 inches; most removed from scrapbook pages, with mount remnants on verso. Vp, mostly Virginia, 1862-64
This fascinating archive of Civil War field art was executed by Robert Shoemaker Dana (1833-1915), who enlisted as a musician in the 9th Pennsylvania Cavalry, and was appointed as a surgeon in the 107th Pennsylvania Infantry in September 1862. He saw service at Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Petersburg, and numerous smaller battles. After the war, he was a physician in Morrisville, PA for many years. The drawings are not all dated, but most fit clearly into the chronology of Dana's service record. The earliest shows the Lucy Carson house in Kentucky, where his cavalry regiment was stationed in 1862. The remainder are all from his service with the 107th Pennsylvania Infantry as it moved southwards through Virginia in 1863 and 1864. Perhaps the most interesting depicts his winter quarters in Belle Plains, shortly after participating in Burnside's abortive "Mud March" near Fredericksburg. The drawing also depicts Dana's bayonet, an old canteen he used as a shovel, his improvised broom, and his sword and belt. A sketch of the fortifications at Belle Plains is also noteworthy for its detail. Seven of the drawings date from the siege of Petersburg circa August to October 1864, including sketches of the Union siege works at Forts Duchesne and Wadsworth, both with colored flags flying high. Four freshly dug graves can be seen in the foreground of Fort Wadsworth, which marked the far left of the Union lines at Petersburg. None of these pieces are signed by Dana, but they were found with other signed material in the same hand, and one 1863 drawing in this lot depicts the tent of the "107th surgeon" as "my winter quarters." The lot also includes a short manuscript note on the regiment's movements during Gettysburg, July 1863, and other related ephemera. For other art by Dana unrelated to the Civil War, see lots 196, 220, 221, and 284.
