[Chicago: circa 1916-25].
Price: $12,000.00
A collection of 60 large gelatin silver photographs by Chicago ad-man Leroy Truman Goble. The collection features outstanding images of nude women both in the studio and outdoors, along with several other portraits of women, and of actors dating from the early days of Chicago’s Sawyer Goodman Theater. A prominent figure among Chicago’s literary and theatrical circles, Goble had developed close friendships with almost everyone involved in the Chicago literary renaissance, including Carl Sandburg, Sherwood Anderson, Floyd Dell, Vachel Lindsay, Ben Hecht, and John Gunther. *Chicago Tribune* journalist and author Harry Hansen wrote a special memorial tribute to Goble in 1946. As noted by Hansen and others, Goble also was an important collector and an accomplished amateur painter and photographer. An active member of the Caxton club and Chicago Camera Club, in 1922 Goble served as president of the Chicago Camera Club alongside of Gilbert B. Seehausen (then Treasurer), a fellow photographer in the advertising business who later won acclaim for his use of modernist and avant-garde elements in portraits for *Esquire* and other magazines. Included in the collection are eight portraits of Goble, four of which were taken by Seehausen (including one signed by Seehausen in ink).
The collection consists of 50 photographs neatly mounted on thick paper portfolio sheets, and 10 loose photographs all of a nude female model. Modest silvering to a few prints at the edges, overall near fine. The prints range in size from about 7” x 9” to 10” x 13”. Most are black and white, including some that are gold tinted, possibly graytones. None of the subjects are unidentified, and only one print (of two young women dancing on a beach) is signed and dated by Goble (1916). Aside from the eight portraits of Goble, the other 52 prints were all likely taken by him. Many of Goble’s images build upon the modernist aesthetic established by Stieglitz and Steichen, especially in his use of raking light and blurred backgrounds in his many portraits of actors and women. Other images illustrate the tension between advertising art and fine art, as seen in his outdoor portraits of women in pioneer dress in Black Hawk country (where he was born), and in his landscape views of Native American villages and cliff dwellings.
Among the mounted prints 32 are housed in a commercial four-ring binder (Wilson-Jones Co., Chicago) with custom-made marbled paper sides. Among the prints in the portfolio are 12 images of women: portraits (including seven nudes) taken in the studio or outdoors on a wooded beach; and 20 portraits of male actors in various roles (including two outdoor portraits of a young man on a beach dressed in a loincloth). The other 18 mounted prints were removed from the same type of binder: these include three outdoor portraits (of a young man and two women in pioneer dress), seven landscape views, and eight portraits of Goble (including one image of Goble in company of three friends). The remaining 10 loose prints are studies of a female nude: these prints range in size from about 7” x 13” to 14” x 11” – and all appear to be of the same woman.
A remarkable collection of early 20th century American fine art photographs, documenting the early theatrical and related artistic circles of the Chicago literary renaissance.
Item #411494
