JOSEPH JANVIER WOODWARD (1833-1884)

'Photo-Micrographs of Test Objects', 1874

Details

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)

Provenance

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

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Lot Essay

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.

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