A desk owned by Gen. Robert E. Lee was the top lot of a day of robust bidding in Cowan’s American History Live Salesroom Auction, which was held on June 9. Selling for $32,400, the Lee desk was one of eight lots to sell for more than $10,000 during the five-hour sale that saw over 600 collectors, dealers, and institutions bidding on 392 lots. Prices reported include buyer’s premium.
In addition to the lure of owning something that once belonged to one of the Civil War’s most famous generals, the humble, drop-front desk has an impeccable provenance, which helped drive bidding past its estimate. At the time of the general’s death, Lee’s widow gifted the desk to his personal physician, Dr. Robert Madison, himself a descendent of President James Madison. Madison’s family passed the desk down for generations before consigning it to Cowan’s.
The auction also featured nine original works of art by Alfred R. Waud (1828-91), who worked during the Civil War as a sketch artist for the New York Illustrated Newspaper and Harper's Weekly. The Library of Congress houses most of his original wartime sketches, making it very rare for his work to hit the market.
“Waud’s illustrations so rarely hit the market that it’s considered a special sale when even one comes up at auction,” said Katie Horstman, Cowan’s director of American History. “We had nine today, so needless to say we had overwhelming interest, and the prices certainly reflect that.”
The top lot by Waud was a watercolor of Lieutenant Bayard Wilkeson holding his battery to its work in an exposed position at the Battle of Gettysburg, which sold for $19,200. Other top Waud lots included Gen. Custer’s division retiring from Mt. Jackson, Va., and burning the forage for $16,800; Gen. George McClellan bidding farewell to the Army of the Potomac for $8,100; and the Devil’s Den at the Battle of Gettysburg for $6,000.
As has come to be expected at a Cowan’s American History Auction, this sale featured an extraordinary collection of rare 19th century photography. This included the second highest sale price of the day, an exceptionally rare Wounded Knee Massacre and Pine Ridge Agency photo album, which sold for $26,400. The album contains 52 boudoir-size albumen prints, most with credit in the negative to Northwestern Photo Co. of Chadron, Neb. It's the most extensive Wounded Knee photo album ever handled by Cowan's in its 20-plus years of business and contains several photographs Cowan’s experts have never seen in person, and some that were never published.
Other photography highlights included a CDV album containing photographs of spiritualists, social reformers, suffragettes, and abolitionists that sold for $14,400; an exceptionally rare quarter plate ambrotype of a Dakota Indian for $11,400; a quarter plate daguerreotype of a mathematics teacher with young students for $10,800; and a collection of Julia Tuell photographs of the Northern Cheyenne for $7,800.
For the second time in 2017, the name of Norm Flayderman drew the interest of buyers from across the globe. The top lot from the property of N. Flayderman & Co. was a collection of Little Big Horn relics that sold for $9,600. A lot of over 20 bullets, cartridges, and horse bones, the pieces were personally collected by noted George Custer scholar James Hutchins and delivered to Flayderman.
Flayderman was quite the extensive collector, with lots spanning multiple categories, including manuscripts and archives, Civil War broadsides, and folk art carved powder horns and pipes. Some of the top performers from the sale included extremely rare hand-drawn and painted sword catalogs of Widmann & Co. & Horstmann, which sold for $6,600; the Civil War archive of Lt. Col. Dana Willis King, 8th New Hampshire Infantry, for $5,700; and a Civil War recruitment broadside for the Rockingham Light Infantry, 5th New Hampshire Volunteers, for $5,400.
Miscellaneous highlights from the sale included items presented to Buffalo Bill Cody by veterans of The Charge of the Light Brigade in Manchester, England, 1891, which sold for $12,600; a female runaway slave, illustrated reward broadside from 1851 for $10,800; the extensive archive of Francis Preston Blair Sr. and Family for $9,600; a Society of the Cincinnati Membership Badge for $7,800; and Brook Farm Utopian Community, handpainted 1845 book of wildlife, for $6,000.
To learn more, visit www.cowans.com.