Photograph Signed

by YEATS, WILLIAM BUTLER. [BOUGHTON, ALICE]

$20,000 · Offered by Biblio

First edition · Signed

New York: np, 1903. First Edition. nb. Very Good. EXCEEDINGLY RARE SIGNED PHOTOGRAPH OF YEATS BY ALICE BOUGHTON. ONE OF THE EARLIEST KNOWN SIGNED YEATS PHOTOS. A rare bust portrait of Yeats as a young man, signed and inscribed by Yeats to U.S. politician and later U.S. secretary of state Bainbridge Colby: "To Mr. Bainbridge Colby with kind regards from WB Yeats March 1904." Inscribed in ink on the flush board mount beneath the photograph. On the verso of the photograph mount is written in pencil: "Young Yeats photo [????] not to be used without Mr. Yeats permission." The photograph was taken by the photographer Alice Boughton during Yeats's first American tour (November 11, 1903 - March 9, 1904), almost certainly on December 22, 1903, when Yeats's friend and champion, the Irish-American collector John Quinn, arranged for the sitting with Boughton. Quinn wrote to Alice Boughton on January 7, 1904, to thank her for four prints (two solio prints and two platinum prints) he received and noted that "Yeats received the three photographs which you sent him and was charmed by them." The studio portraits are of Yeats in different poses and it is possible that this print - presumably one of the three given to Yeats - is a unique example. We have not found it reproduced anywhere. The American photographer Alice Boughton "opened her own portrait studio in New York in 1890, and her subjects were prominent literary and theatrical figures. Her studies of children are also noteworthy and she

• Publisher: np
• Year: 1903
• Edition: First Edition
• Binding: unknown

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.