One of 600
by Walter Newman in the Maine Antique Digest
Mid-19th-century images produced as ambrotypes, tintypes, and daguerreotypes ushered in the age of personal portrait photography that we enjoy today. Harlowe-Powell Auction Gallery of Charlottesville, Virginia, sold a rare Civil War ambrotype at its August 11 on-site auction of the contents of Westover Farm in nearby Greene County. The plate is hand tinted and appears to be in its original hinged case. It brought $4704 (including buyer’s premium) from a Petersburg, Virginia, collector.
While Civil War-era images routinely pass through auctions, they usually fetch substantially lower prices than this image did. One Civil War collectibles dealer put this particular purchase into perspective as follows: “There is a collector’s checklist that progresses through a matrix of variables to continually refine and value the image in question.” He went on to list several of those variables: Is the image a known or an unknown individual? Is it Union or Confederate? Is it by a known or an unknown photographer? Is the individual an officer or enlisted man? Is he armed or unarmed? And so on. Finally, he added, “Then you add in the ‘x factor.’” Since these types of images are each unique, whichever one is being considered is likely to be the only one in existence. The dealer explained, “The ‘x factor’ is what sets a particular image apart from all others. It is what drives the price.” The image offered by Harlowe-Powell had the “x factor.”
The portrait is by an unknown photographer but is known to be the image of Captain Bezaliel Garland Brown, an ancestor of the…read more