Sketch “No. 45” measures 7 x 9”, mounted on card backing measuring 12 x 16”. The albumen photo exhibits three small dark stains in upper right hand corner, and one more in the lower right, while its central soldier images remain crisp and clear. Outer margins display light soiling and a trace of light water stain in the extreme right corner. Else VG. Accompanied by the original information sheet—“Studying the Art of War”—which exhibits soiling and water-staining along the upper half, and a torn, but taped, lower right corner, while remaining entirely legible.

This famed print features a grouping of four officers near Union headquarters at Fairfax Court House in June 1863. The most prominent of these is Eric Dahlgren, standing at the left edge of the grouping. In 1864 Dahlgren would lose his life leading the famed [and doomed] 1864 raid to liberate Union prisoners from Richmond’s Libby Prison. Other officers include Lt. Col. Dickinson, adjutant to General Hooker; Count Zeppalin, a Prussian visitor; Major Ludlow, later General in Command of the Colored Brigade; and Lt. Rosencranz, a Swedish Aide de Camp. The sketch owes its “Art of War” title to the book which can be seen in the hands of Major Dickinson, seated on the left.

Alexander Gardner, an early associate of Matthew Brady, was perhaps the most accomplished photographer of the American Civil War. The two volume album Gardner’s Photographic Sketchbook of the War contained 100 albumen prints in total with 50 tipped in plates in each volume accompanied by a descriptive text possibly by Alexander Gardner. Because there was no way of printing the photographs directly onto the pages the 100 photographs for each set were made individually and then affixed to the pages. This was both laborious and expensive and the two volume sold for $150 a set when they were published in the 1860s a vast sum of money at the time.

A fine display print, superb collectible.

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