?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 7,000 - $ 10,000
ARNOLD, CHARLES D. (1844-1927) An oversized album containing 37 remarkable photographs, comprising lyrical scenes of late 19th-century Chicago, which is depicted as largely pastoral, and breathtaking proto-modernist views of the construction of the Columbia Exposition, including 8 oversized panoramas and 4 mammoth-plates. Platinum prints (24), sizes ranging from 5x6 1/2 to 8 3/4x21 inches (14x16.5 to 21.6x53.3 cm.) to 17x20 3/4 inches (43.2x52.7 cm.), and printing out paper prints 5x20 3/4 and 7x8 1/2 inches (13x52.7 and 17.8x21.6 cm.); the former with Arnold's captions, inventory numbers and dates in the negative and the latter with his credit. Elephant folio, cloth, soiled and worn; contents tight. 1891-92
In 1892, Chicago's Director of Works Daniel Burnham hired C.D. Arnold, who was characterized by Alfred Stieglitz as "an obscure Buffalo photographer," to photograph the construction of the Columbia Exposition (of 1893).
Arnold was a promising architectural photographer who had worked for many of the prominent architects chosen to design buildings on the site. The beauty of his images reflect his aesthetic sophistication; the images are handsomely composed and a few recall works by Durandelle.
Arnold produced an impeccable series of construction views, and an equivalent set of views of the finished Fair, most of which were and are best seen as the mammoth-plate platinotypes that formed the first "edition" of the work. Sets of these views are rare and were distributed intermittently to a number of public collections.
