(MUSIC) Beutler John B A large archive of original drawings

Sale 2287 - Lot 331

Price Realized: $ 2,400

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900

(MUSIC.) Beutler, John B. A large archive of original drawings of musicians in 1850s New York, and other subjects. Approximately 140 pencil and ink drawings, various sizes, many about 8 x 5 inches, one of them signed by the artist; various conditions but most with no more than minor wear * and one related engraving. [New York?], circa 1854-1861

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Additional Details

John Baptist Beutler (1824-1874) was a singer and music teacher. He was born in Freiburg, Germany, and resided in New York from about 1851 to 1861, other than a year or two in San Francisco (see lot 133). He was an avid caricaturist on the side, and occasionally had some of his work published. As an active part of the city's musical landscape, he was well-positioned to sketch some of the leading musicians of the 1850s.
Among the subjects who can be identified are pianist and composer Sigismond Thalberg, violinist Henri Vieuxtemps, violinist and conductor Theodore Thomas, Brazilian child prodigy Arthur Napoleon, and singers Elena d'Angri, Felicita von Vestvali, and Adelina Patti, all of whom toured America in the late 1850s. Some of these sketches were done as studies for the published 1858 engraving by Kaehrle after Beutler, "Mr. Ullman's Musical Tour through the United States," a copy of which is included in this lot (9 x 11 1/4 inches).
28 of these drawings are of musicians who are more or less identified, with many others captured in performance. Three drawings were apparently done as costume designs, one of them being colored. Beutler's interests also extended to local and world political events. One cartoon is captioned "New York Democrat: Hurrah for Douglas," and another is captioned "Börse der Unternehmer" (Stock Exchange of the Entrepreneurs). Another series of five drawings satirizes Napoleon III's defeat of Franz Joseph I in the 1859 War of Italian Independence.