?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
ALFRED R. WAUD Monument Rock, New Mexico.
Pencil with white chalk heightening on blue wove paper, circa 1870. 90x110 mm; 3 5/8x4 3/8 inches. Initialed in pencil, lower left recto, and annotated in ink, verso.
Ex-collection Mary Waud, wife of the artist; private collection, Connecticut.
Waud (1828-1891) was an English artist who immigrated to New York in 1850 seeking work as a scenery painter for theater productions. After the Civil War broke out, Waud was hired by the New York Daily News and Harper's Weekly as a Union illustrator to create combat drawings that brought the realities of the war to readers at home. Waud travelled with the Army of the Potomac and witnessed each of the field army's battles, including most notably, the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861, as well as the Battle of Gettysburg and Pickett's Charge in 1863, which few other illustrators witnessed.
Veterans of the war lauded Waud for his accuracy and realistic illustrations of combat. Unlike most illustrators, Waud became well-known to the readership as an adventurous, physically imposing and rugged loner. After the Civil War ended, Harper's Weekly called for artists to show their readership 'the rising of a new world from chaos.' Waud depicted the Reconstruction of the South and gave the public an understanding of the nuanced political and social conflicts, including the experiences of African Americans who had just won their freedom.
From the South, Waud went on expeditions to the American West. The current drawing is among his post-war oeuvre. Waud sent typical scenes, like cattle drives, rendered in illustrator's detail, back to Harper's Weekly, but also captured the diversity and gumption of the territory's inhabitants as well as studies of the magnificent landscape phenomena that abounded in the American West.
