The photos below show pretty much the condition they were in when I got them. The acids in the matting and cardboard behind them along with some slight foxing took a toll on the prints, the artist remarques were barely visible due the damage. Taking all of this in consideration, I started to look into the possibility of having them conserved, I didn’t have to look too far.
As luck would have, there happened to be a person here in Woodstock, Cory Barbis, that does fine art restoration and conservation work. I brought the prints to her for an evaluation and estimate for the work that would be needed. By the way, Cory gave me some references one of which was the Copley Fine Art Auctions in Boston with whom they told me that she is held in high regard, good enough for me. So last summer I dropped them off and waited. Below are the results of Cory’s work and I couldn’t be more pleased with the results.
In the time between acquiring the prints and having the conservation work done, I decided to do some research about the prints, I didn’t want to pay a fair amount of money only to find out that there were only 50 sets printed. Searching the internet I found only one other print comparable to these in the Princeton Library, which is marked Set 14, see the photo below with description.
Speckled Trout Fighting, ca. 1901
Engraving on cream-colored mulberry paper
plate: 17.8 x 26.5 cm (7 x 10 7/16 in.)
sheet: 38.6 x 48 cm (15 3/16 x 18 7/8 in.)
Gift of Carl Otto von Kienbusch, Class of 1906, for the Carl Otto von
Kienbusch Jr., Memorial Collection
Below is one other that I found in the Library of Congress and public domain, but isn’t part of any of the sets. It matches one of images posted below that are in Rhead’s book, The Speckled Brook Trout, used on pages 21, 75 and 200 respectively. Notice those were titled, none of the sets had titles under them.
The best information that I found for the set was from an excerpt of a 1901 New York Times article regarding the exhibition of the prints at the Keppel Gallery in New York City. The article states that only fifty sets were printed, that satisfied my justification for the work. The article did mislabel them as etchings, they are, in fact engravings.
So now the real work begins, trying to figure out new matting and framing, the old frames were in very poor condition. A bit of irony or coincidence in all of this. When my wife and I were first married, we lived in the same town on Long Island where Louis Rhead’s home, Seven Oaks, was, I used to pass it quite often on my way to fish the ponds and streams out on Long Island.
Jim
