Live Auction 2767the deLIGHTed eye: Modernist Masterworks from a Private Collection
JOSEPH JANVIER WOODWARD (1833-1884)
Lot 67

JOSEPH JANVIER WOODWARD (1833-1884)

'Photo-Micrographs of Test Objects', 1874

Closed4 April 2013

Price Realised

USD 16,250

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JOSEPH JANVIER WOODWARD (1833-1884)
'Photo-Micrographs of Test Objects', 1874
Washington, D.C., War Department, Surgeon General's Office, 1874. 21 albumen prints, bound in a large 4to. album; each titled in Latin, numbered and annotated in ink (on the letterpress mount); image, each approximately 6 1/8 x 6¼in. (15.5 x 15.8cm.); inscribed to Henry C. Hyde and dated '1874' in ink (on a front endpaper)

Sotheby's, New York, April 18, 1996, lot 108

Specialist note

Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Janvier Woodward served in the U.S. Civil War as Army Assistant Surgeon and produced several publications on war-related diseases. Woodward performed and wrote reports on the autopsies of both Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth and was also a pioneer in photo-microscopy.
This impressive album includes 21 microscopic studies of insect scales by Woodward, fine examples of abstraction in nature and indicative of the way that 19th-century scientists began to utilize photography to further their knowledge.
A set of Woodward's photomicrographs are in the collection of The Royal Microscopical Society in London.