?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
(MILITARY--CIVIL WAR--PHOTOGRAPHY.) BOWSER, DAVID BUSTILL. Rather Die Freemen than live to be Slaves. United States Colored Troops. Carte-de-visite albumen photograph of one of David Bustill Bowser's painted cloth banners. this example bears bowser's own stamp ("d.b. bowser artist") on the reverse, with a pencil note saying that this particular banner was for the 3rd colored regiment, bound for nashville, tn. Philadelphia: Bowser, 1863
a very rare carte-de-visite photograph of one of david bustill bowser's elaborate banners, created for one of the newly formed African-American regiments which were training at Camp William Penn. David Bustill Bowser (1820-1900) artist, and designer, came from a long line of Philadelphia's black aristocracy and was a cousin of Frederick Douglass. The Bowser home was a stop on the Underground Rail Road. Bowser studied art with Robert Douglass Jr. himself a pupil of Thomas Sully. In 1863, following the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln gave the order allowing the formation of colored regiments.
