Artist 101

1.

Life and Career

Born in Wisconsin in 1868, Curtis was a keen photographer from an early age. When his family moved to Seattle in 1887, he acquired a share in a thriving local portrait photography studio and soon became its sole proprietor.

In the mid 1890s, Curtis began photographing local Puget Sound Native Americans digging for clams and mussels on the tide flats. A chance encounter with a group of scientists, including anthropologist and Native American expert George Bird Grinnell, led to Curtis’s appointment as official photographer on the 1899 Harriman Expedition to Alaska. On the two-month exploration, Curtis photographed everything he encountered - from glaciers to indigenous tribes.

Alaska was followed by a trip with Grinnell to visit the Piegan Blackfoot in Montana where Curtis became increasingly interested in documenting what then seemed a “mystifying” Native American life and culture. Upon his return to Seattle, he mounted exhibitions, gave lectures and published articles on his new passion. The relentless erosion of Native American culture at the end of the 19th century prompted Curtis to undertake a monumental project to create “a comprehensive and permanent record of all the important tribes of the United States and Alaska that still retain to a considerable degree their ... customs and traditions." This resulted in The North American Indian, a series of 20 lavishly illustrated text volumes accompanied by a portfolio of larger format photogravures.

Curtis sought financial support from J.P. Morgan and planned to sell subscriptions of the volumes and their accompanying portfolios. However, only 272 sets of the projected 500 were ever completed – funding and subscriptions dried up as the years passed and circumstances and tastes changed. The first volume of The North American Indian appeared in 1907 to great critical acclaim; the last two volumes appeared in 1930 and were almost completely disregarded.

During his career, Curtis took more than 40,000 photographs of the Native American tribes he encountered, made over 10,000 recordings of their speech and music, produced the multi-media Curtis Indian Picture Opera and released the documentary In the Land of the Headhunters. This sale includes examples of the extraordinarily rare posters for this ground-breaking but commercially unsuccessful film.

In the 1920s, to help raise funds to complete the project, Curtis accepted work from his friend and Hollywood mogul Cecil B. Demille, who hired him to take movie stills for films such as The Ten Commandments. Striking examples of these images can be found in this sale.

The North American Indian was ruinous to Curtis’s finances. Interest in Native American life had waned following World War I and the stock market crash of 1929 made it impossible for Curtis to sell his work. The Morgan company sold much of its inventory of The North American Indian, including 19 complete sets and thousands of prints and copper plates to Charles Lauriat Books of Boston, Massachusetts for just $1,000 and a percentage of future royalties. A bitter divorce from his wife Clara resulted in the loss of the family home and studio in Seattle, forcing Edward and his daughter Beth to make copy negatives of key images and relocate to Los Angeles.

The Curtis Studio continued to operate in the Biltmore Hotel until the 1960s, largely under the stewardship of Beth Curtis and her husband Manford “Mag” Magnusson. Curtis died at age 84 in California in 1952. A small obituary in The New York Times noted his achievement in “compiling Indian history”.

2.

Collecting

Orotones
Also known as goldtones, or occasionally even ‘curt-tones,' orotones comprised 30-50% of Curtis’s total print output. They were produced in much the same manner as creating paper prints by first coating a glass plate with gelatin silver emulsion which, after development, was backed with bronzing powders to give it its distinctive golden appearance. Finished orotones were virtually always framed in a variety of attractive arts and crafts-style Curtis Studio frames. Curtis printed approximately 60 to 70 of his negatives as orotones. Orotones were available in various sizes – from miniature plates of c. 4 x 5 inches (probably a salesman’s sample) to 18 x 22 inches or even slightly larger. The most popular size was 11 x 14 inches and 8 x 10 inches and 14 x 17 inches (this rather scarcer) while oversized plates of 18 x 22 inches or larger were extremely uncommon. This distinguished collection includes oversized works of two of Curtis’s most popular images, The Vanishing Race, Navaho and Cañon de Chelley.

Platinum prints
Curtis created a body of platinum prints, which can vary enormously in size from 4 x 5 inches to 24 x 32 inches (these are very rare). He used various papers for the prints – although they were usually lightly textured to create a matte finish. Platinum prints are usually signed and blindstamped on the surface (recto) of the print.

Gelatin silver/ border prints
Curtis also created gelatin silver prints for sale and/ or exhibition. These are almost always “sepia” or warm toned and, like his platinum prints, are usually signed and blindstamped on the recto. Border prints are named for their two distinct gray borders, but Curtis also trimmed and mounted gelatin silver prints making them quite difficult to distinguish from platinum prints without magnification.

Photogravures
The majority of Curtis’s images were printed as photogravures, virtually all of them for The North American Indian. Curtis used two standard sizes - 5 x 7 inches (also described as small-format) and 12 x 7 inches (or large-format). These were usually printed on three papers – Van Gelder Holland, vellum or Japanese tissue.

Cyanotypes
Curtis produced a large body of cyanotypes – blue-toned prints easily and inexpensively made using a mixture of iron compounds which, when applied to paper and exposed to UV light, create a Prussian Blue image. It seems Curtis may have initially printed all his 40,000 + negatives as cyanotypes – literally blue-prints for larger finished compositions. Relatively few of these cyanotype studies have survived, although the sale boasts three groups of these extraordinarily rare preliminary sketches.

Blue-tone gelatin silver prints
Curtis produced a series of blue-toned gelatin silver prints (not to be confused with cyanotypes), such as the Aphrodite Series.

3.

On the Market

Edward Curtis offers something for every collector and the market for his work is extremely buoyant offering a variety of objects - from widely available and affordable orotones, paper prints and ephemera to extraordinary and highly valuable versions of these items. A complete set of The North American Indian, for example, in good condition and with excellent provenance, will sell for over two million dollars.

Excellent provenance and rarity are both key in determining the value of Curtis’s work. The collection coming up for sale on 30 June, possibly the largest in private hands to come to market in recent history, includes a number of rare and even unique objects, each priced accordingly. The fact that the collection was also largely sourced from Curtis’s immediate family adds tremendous value.

Condition is another important consideration. Much of Curtis’s work on paper was produced non-archivally and so has suffered accordingly over the past century. Orotones were almost always sold framed. These frames are considered integral to the value of the work and so any invasive damage will adversely affect value. When considering acquiring a work, collectors should always ask the auction specialist for a detailed condition report and, if possible, inspect the work at first hand.

4.

Collecting

Edward Curtis’s contribution to the history of photography and anthropology is immense and, as such, he has enjoyed an international following for well over a century. His masterpiece, the monumental North American Indian has been likened The King James Bible which, if replicated today, is estimated would cost a staggering $35 million. The immense scope of his output – whether orotones, prints, documents, volumes or ephemera - also account for his perennial and broad popularity across collecting categories.

Collecting photographs and ephemera purely as an investment should be avoided, and we always advise collectors to buy what they love. However, whilst owning a work by Edward Curtis offers the opportunity to display a decorative masterpiece, Curtis' work is also very likely to retain, if not increase in, value over time provided it is displayed and stored correctly to avoid damage.

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