Wall, Bernhardt. Celebrities Sketched from Life: An Album Containing 20 Original Sketches by Bernhardt Wall. N.p. [New York / Texas], circa 1900–1919. A completely unique, primary artist's album containing twenty original, hand-executed portrait studies from life. Folio, measuring 14-3/4" x 11-1/4" (375 x 286 mm). Collating [20] leaves of thick card mounts, each bearing an original work of art comprised of eighteen fine pencil sketches, one vibrant color pastel drawing, and one finished watercolor painting. Hand-bound by the artist himself in black cloth-backed paper-covered boards, with a custom paper label affixed to the front cover bearing manuscript titles signed by Wall. Each individual artwork is mounted to card, titled in Wall’s distinctive hand along the lower margin, and most feature his localized notes regarding the specific date, place, and historical circumstances of the live sitting.
The physical condition of this album is graded VERY GOOD with the internal artwork grading NEAR FINE to FINE using the standard antiquarian grading scale for historic manuscripts and original art. The original exterior boards exhibit prominent period staining, surface rubbing, and routine wear to the corners and spine edges. Internally, the thick card mounts are uniformly age-tanned and, as is typical for Wall's structurally heavy, self-bound albums, have largely become disbound from the cloth backstrip. The twenty central original drawings and paintings themselves remain spectacular, clean, and beautifully preserved, free of erasure, smudging, or modern conservation work, retaining total graphic brilliance.
Live Portraiture, In-Person Anecdotes, and the Suppressed Wilson Plate
This extraordinary, unrecorded archive serves as a monumental primary record of early twentieth-century American iconography, captured by the celebrated "Historian-Etcher" Bernhardt Wall (1872–1956). Renowned for his meticulous multi-volume copperplate books—including his masterwork Wall's Etched Monthly—Wall traveled extensively to sketch the most defining political, literary, and cultural figures of his generation directly from life. The exceptional lineup of sitters in this unique album includes United States Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, literary titan Mark Twain, labor leader Samuel Gompers, orator William Jennings Bryan, French military commander Marshal Joffre, Tolstoy's son Ilya Tolstoi, Ziegfeld Follies star Fannie Brice, and pioneering painter George R. Boynton, among other prominent editors, mayors, and artists of the pre-WWI era.
What elevates this volume far beyond a traditional artist's sketchbook are the extensive, highly intimate handwritten anecdotes penned by Wall directly onto the mounts. These notes expose unprecedented, first-hand historical context behind the creation of some of his most famous commercial etchings. A paramount example accompanies his 1912 portrait of Woodrow Wilson, where Wall writes:
"Woodrow Wilson / Governor N.J. / Summer 1912 / Addressing Spanish War / Veterans / At National Encampment / Atlantic City. He said he never had been a soldier, but could assure us he was a fighter any how - in the cause of righteousness. This was the prime inspiration for the plate 'Commander in Chief' made on our entry into the war - to which he took exception - on account of its military uniform. I suppressed the plate, after making twenty prints. BW;"
This explicit documentation of a presidential objection and the subsequent suppression of an official wartime image represents a major bibliographical and historical discovery, offering fresh insight into Wilson’s complex public image and Wall's high-integrity studio practices.
A Primary Studio Resource and Research Artifact
Every leaf in this album stands as an autonomous, museum-grade piece of American art, documenting the precise genesis of Wall's creative process before his drawings were transferred and chemically bitten into copper plates. The inclusion of full-color mediums—the delicate pastel and the standalone watercolor—demonstrates the full breadth of Wall's versatile draftsmanship outside of his standard monochrome printmaking. Because Wall compiled and bound these unique retrospective albums in extremely limited quantities for personal reference or for elite contemporary patrons, surviving examples containing this high concentration of frontline historical figures are virtually non-existent on the open market.
A COMPLETELY UNIQUE AND UNRECORDED FOLIO ARTIST'S ALBUM HAND-BOUND BY BERNHARDT WALL, CONTAINING TWENTY ORIGINAL FROM-LIFE PORTRAIT STUDIES OF PROMINENT EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY CELEBRITIES, ANNOTATED WITH INVALUABLE MANUSCRIPT PROVENANCE CONCERNING THE SUPPRESSION OF HISTORIC WARTIME PLATES, CONSTITUTING A PARAMOUNT ARTIFACT FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH INTO AMERICAN ETCHING HISTORY, PRESIDENTIAL ICONOGRAPHY, AND VISUAL MATERIAL CULTURE, REPRESENTING A DISTINGUISHED ACQUISITION FOR INSTITUTIONAL SPECIAL COLLECTIONS OR PRIVATE AMERICANA AND ART HISTORY ARCHIVES.
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