CURTIS EDWARD S (1868 1952) The Vanishing Race [Navaho]

Sale 2208 - Lot 18

Price Realized: $ 5,040

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

Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000

CURTIS, EDWARD S. (1868-1952)
"The Vanishing Race" [Navaho]. Platinum print, 6x8 inches (15.2x20.3 cm.), triple-mounted, with Curtis's signature, in ink, and his embossed copyright stamp on recto, his embossed studio stamp on the tertiary mount recto and his studio label (trimmed) on mount verso. 1904

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Additional Details

Acquired from a private California dealer in 1996.
The Photograph and the American Dream 1840-1940, 138.
The notion of the vanishing American Indian was widespread in the early twentieth century and one that Curtis popularized. In addition to naming this iconic image, it is the first plate in his magnum opus, "The North American Indian." Later on, he launched a nation-wide lecture and music program called "A Vanishing Race," writing "The thought which this picture is meant to convey, is that the Indians as a race, already shorn of their tribal strength and stripped of their primitive dress, are passing into the darkness of an unknown future."
Today approximately three hundred thousand Americans boast of Navajo ancestry, including the center fielder of the Boston Red Sox, Jacoby Ellsbury.