Spooner, Shearjashub:

$500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

AN APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES, IN BEHALF OF ART, ARTISTS, AND THE PUBLIC WEAL. Spooner begins this strange pamphlet with a promotion for his project of re-engraving a group of French copper plates on paintings in the Musee Francaise and the Musee Royale which he had purchased, but it swiftly degenerates into a rant on the wrongs done him as a struggling artist and the need for national patronage of the arts. There is, however, a surprising amount of information of the New York art and auction market of the time. As unlikely a set of notions as the author's name, but of considerable interest. Groce & Wallace tell us the author was a prominent New York dentist before he began to practice engraving and art promotion in 1842; he authored several massive reference works in the early 1850's, as well as several dentistry manuals. He died in 1859, presumably of frustration at lack of patronage. OCLC locates a total of eleven copies.

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