Not just for the record

Pioneering French photographer Gustave Le Gray’s albumen print of 1855 showing waves crashing against rocks at sunset was a pleasant enough picture and in breathtakingly good condition – but how could it possibly be worth that much?

The answer lies partly in the fact that Le Gray was one of the first great photographers to revolutionise photography, dragging it from an exciting scientific discovery into a medium with considerable aesthetic promise. Le Gray, who came from the art world, saw the potential of painting with light as opposed to oils – and the result was an artistic as well as technological achievement.

Photography is a field which developed at auction only over the past 40 years and has achieved a significantly increased profile in the last two decades. Sophisticated and knowledgeable buyers have recognised how rare the great treasures of photography are becoming and we are now witnessing the last great scramble for masterpieces from a bygone era.

The high end of the market is dominated by a select band of photographers including Le Gray, Charles Sheeler, Andreas Gursky, Joseph-Philibert de Prangey, Edward Steichen, Man Ray, Richard Prince, Robert Mapplethorpe and Diane Arbus.

But travellers’ albums and bygone images, such as traction engines, early motor rallies, fishing smacks, steam trains and Victorian agricultural and urban life, can still be picked up relatively cheaply. Among several archives on offer at Bonhams in Oxford, on April 19, is one relating to the Wild West showman, Samuel Franklin Cody. No, not Buffalo Bill – although he encouraged people to think he was related by changing his surname from Cowdery to that of his hero, adopting the mannerisms of William Frederick Cody and growing an identical moustache.

Strange though his behaviour was, however, SF Cody was a man of diverse talents, including those of kite developer and pioneer aviator. He was star attraction at the UK’s first flying display, at Doncaster racecourse, in 1909. He signed British naturalisation papers in front of the crowd and attempted to win a prize for the first British pilot in a British aeroplane to fly a circular mile. Alas, he crashed before takeoff.

Pictures of Cody at the Doncaster Aviation Meeting and ephemera including a 16-page programme, correspondence, press cuttings and an invoice for repairs to his wrecked biplane, is estimated at £800-£1,200.

Also on offer are three archives of photographs by Fred Judge, who gave up his career as an engineer in Wakefield to pursue his passion, setting up a photographic studio in Hastings in 1902. Each collection of topographical images – one including no fewer than 3,500 postcards – is estimated at between £300 and £600.

A final word on that £507,500 Gustave Le Gray photograph, which had been estimated at £40,000-£60,000. It was the fourth time in 12 months that the world record had been broken, first by a Man Ray image of his mistress (£357,353), then by Charles Sheeler’s 1927 photo of the Ford motor plant in Detroit (£366,990) and finally by another Le Gray photo, which made £419,500 only minutes before his seascape eclipsed them all. In 2007 a 2001 image entitled 99 cent II (diptych), by Andreas Gursky, established a best when it fetched £1.7m in London.

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