Oct 22, 2009 - Sale 2191

Sale 2191 - Lot 64

Price Realized: $ 18,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
BENTLEY, WILSON A. (1865-1931)
Elegant group of 7 snowcrystals. Gold-chloride toned photomicrographs from a glass plate negative, 3x4 inches (7.6x10.2 cm.). Circa 1903-1910
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Additional Details

From the collection of Mary Bentley (the photographer's nephew's wife); to the present owner.


Working at the prismatic intersection of art and science, Wilson Bentley became the first person to photograph a single snowcrystal in 1885 by adapting a microscope to a bellows camera. Capturing over 5,000 images of snowcrystals in his lifetime, Bentley discovered the now commonly-known fact that no two snowflakes are the same. (He was also the first American to measure raindrops.)


Deeply commited to his work, Bentley wrote, "Under the microscope I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others. Each crystal was a masterpiece of design; and no one design was ever repeated [...] I became possessed with a great desire to show people something of this wonderful loveliness, and ambition to become, in some measure, its preserver."


These delicately rendered "ice flowers"--astonishingly beautiful and starkly geometric--are offered here, along with a group of images of lace-like frosted windows (lot 65).