Brown, William H. [Facsimile of] "Portrait Gallery of Distinguished American Citizens, with Biographical Sketches and Fac-similes of Original Letters" bound

William H. Brown. [Facsimile of]   Portrait Gallery of Distinguished American Citizens, with Biographical Sketches and Fac-similes of Original Letters.

Hartford: E.B. & E.C. Kellogg, 1845.  At back of title page is the notice, “This reissue is published by G.A. Baker & Co., New York, 1931.”  Limited to 600 copies; this one is not numbered.  

Frontispiece with portrait of Washington plus 26 other silhouettes and one page, lithographed manuscript facsimile of each man’s writing to accompany each of the 27 portraits, 111 pages of text.  It has powerful images and fascinating text on each famous American.  Howes, B871 gives the quick history of the various editions, including this one.   Gold stamped blue buckram binding.

This book contains a rare group of prints taken from silhouettes cut by William Henry Brown (1808-1883), who was one of the most famous and best practitioners of the now almost lost art of silhouette cutting.  No later than 1843, Brown contracted with the noted Hartford lithographic firm of E.B. & E.C. Kellogg to issue a number of lithographs based on his silhouettes of “Distinguished American Citizens,” and this resulted in a bound volume of these prints.  The prints themselves are copyright dated 1844, and so it is not unlikely that they were issued separately beginning at that date.  Not only are these fascinating and unusual images of the men shown but the originals are quite rare as well.  In an interview in 1874, Brown stated that the bulk of the first edition was destroyed by fire.  This was perhaps the November 21, 1854 fire in the bindery of Case, Tiffany & Co., the binders of the portfolio.  Some complete editions of the folios and some of the individual prints did survive, but they are very scarce.  Here is the later facsimile of off-set reproductions, issued in 1931 which made the images more accessible.               

• Front. w/ George Washington and Eagle
• John Marshall
• John Quincy Adams
• Richard Channing Moore
• Andrew Jackson
• John Forsyth
• William Henry Harrison
• John Caldwell Calhoun
• De Witt Clinton
• Richard Mentor Johnson
• Joel Roberts Poinsett
• Alexander Macomb
• Martin Van Buren
• Samuel Lewis Southard
• Henry Clay
• Henry Alexander Wise
• Thomas Hart Benton
• John Tyler
• Levi Woodbury
• Thomas Cooper
• Daniel Webster
• William White
• Silas Wright
• Nathaniel Potter Tallmadge
• Felix Grundy
• Dixon Hall Lewis
• John Randolph