Beschreibung:

includes two oblong folio albums, each 14.5 x 11", one in red buckram with red pebbled half-leather, the other in maroon buckram with matching pebbled half-leather, each with the same marbled end boards, with gilt Photographs of Gettysburg embossed on each spine, containing 53 albumen photographs (35 in one album, 18 in the other), each 8 x 5.75", mounted on single pages, with a decorative mounting block. Each image is captioned in manuscript hand, presumably by Tipton. Although the albums are undated, battlefield monuments appear in several of the images, suggesting that the photographs were likely taken in 1888, shortly after the 25th anniversary of the battle. William H. Tipton was born in Gettysburg and trained by Charles and Issac Tyson, some of the earliest photographers of the battlefield. Tipton purchased their studio in 1868, and, advertising himself as The Battlefield Photographer produced thousands of photographs for tourists and returning veterans, as well as a number of images of Gettysburg College facilities and students. While Tipton's stereographs are commonly encountered, this is the first compilation of large format images we have seen. The images here exquisitely capture the National Cemetery, the battlefield, many of the important positions -- a number showing monuments -- as well as several fine street scenes of the town itself. Noteworthy among the fomer are views of Chambersburg, Carlisle and Baltimore Streets, as well as a fine view of homes along Taneytown Road taken from Prince's Barn. Unlike George Barnard's monumental "Shermans March to the Sea" assembled shortly after the War, the photographs in these albums show a battlefield far removed from the actual event. Where Barnard set out to convey the horrow of war -- his photographs are filled with mangled and scarred trees, eroding breastworks, and ruined public buildings, and abandoned emplacements, Tipton's images merely evoke the nostalgia associated with a war fought nearly a generation earlier. Like Barnard's "March", few of Tipton's photographs show human subjects, and instead focus on the landscape, using instead granite and marble to substitute for the human waste that had taken place on the battlefield. A fine and important pair of albums. Condition: Both albums solid, with minor wear to boards. Images in the larger album mostly exhibit strong, rich tonality; several images in the second album are light tonally.