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Lot 105
Henry P. Bosse(1844-1893)'Minneiska, Minn.' (from 'Views on the Mississippi River')
1 – 10 October 2025, 12:00 EDT
Online, New YorkSold for US$10,880 inc. premium
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Henry P. Bosse (1844-1893)
'Minneiska, Minn.' (from 'Views on the Mississippi River'), 1885
Cyanotype; titled, dated, and numbered '78a' in a calligraphic hand in ink in the margin, framed.
oval 10 1/2 x 13 1/2 in. (26.7 x 34.3 cm.)
sheet 14 1/2 x 17 1/4 in. (35.6 x 43.8 cm.)
Cyanotype; titled, dated, and numbered '78a' in a calligraphic hand in ink in the margin, framed.
oval 10 1/2 x 13 1/2 in. (26.7 x 34.3 cm.)
sheet 14 1/2 x 17 1/4 in. (35.6 x 43.8 cm.)
Footnotes
Provenance
Major Alexander Mackenzie (1844-1921), U.S. Army Chief of Engineers
Thence by descent
Simon Lowinsky Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1991
Note
In 1874 Henry Bosse began working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Chicago and was soon sent to the River and Harbor Improvement Office in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was subsequently transferred to the Corps' Rock Island District, where he worked under Maj. Alexander Mackenzie to map, survey, and photograph the Mississippi River stretching from the Falls of St. Anthony in Minneapolis to its intersection with the Illinois River north of St. Louis.
To document his work along the Mississippi River, Bosse eventually compiled several albums of cyanotypes - each printed from his large format glass-plate negatives. He gave the albums to fellow members of the Corps, including Maj. Mackenzie, who went on to become its Chief of Engineers from 1904 to 1908.
In 1990 Mackenzie's album was sold at Sotheby's New York, after which it was disassembled so that the individual prints could be sold privately. According to the inscription on the present work, this cyanotype is believed to have been included in Mackenzie's album.
Bosse's cyanotypes rarely come to auction. This print is a vibrant example of the cyanotype process used to capture the expanding American landscape of the nineteenth century.