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Estimate: $ 2,400 - $ 3,400
Poe, Edgar Allan (1809-1849) Carte de Visite.
New York: Published by E. Anthony from the photographic negative in Brady's National Portrait Gallery, post-1862.
Black-and-white albumen photograph on publisher's mount, Poe depicted in a bust portrait with stippled background, the image in rectangular format, occupying the full frame, [another issue with the same publication information renders the portrait in a smaller oval vignette]; Mathew Brady's 1862 copyright statement printed on recto of mount; 4 x 2 1/2 in.
"Brady's claim of having daguerreotyped Poe, although widely publicized, has never been corroborated. [...] Brady's galleries did circulate two portraits of Poe, but both images were merely modified versions of the 'Ultima Thule' daguerreotype taken in 1848 by the Rhode Island daguerreotypist Edwin Manchester. The more familiar of the two Brady portraits is a heavily altered photographic print showing Poe in reverse, situated against a stippled background. [The present lot.] Although this portrait is obviously a retouched version of the 'Ultima Thule' image, its exact genesis is uncertain. [...] The Brady portrait was circulated for at least two decades, in a variety of sizes and formats. One version, an albumen carte-de-visite photograph measuring approximately 3 1/2 x 2 1/4 inches, was distributed during the 1860s; it sometimes bore the stamp of Brady's associates E. & H. T. Anthony." (For more see Michael J. Deas's "The Portraits and Daguerreotypes of Edgar Allan Poe," available at the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore's website: https://www.eapoe.org/papers/misc1921/deas205a.htm.)
