Books and Manuscripts

(Likely Claymont, Delaware, ca. 1867). Ink and wash on heavy wove paper, signed by Darley, bottom left. 11 7/8 x 18 1/2 in. (279 x 470 mm). Sheet mounted to board; light mat burn; scattered light soiling in margins. In mat and period frame, 20 1/4 x 27 1/4 in. (514 x 692 mm).

An original ink and wash drawing by celebrated American illustrator Felix Octavius Carr Darley (1822-88). Likely intended for use as a bank note vignette, and created following the Civil War. It depicts a dramatic scene of a Civil War battle on the left, and at right, the personification of Columbia removing the chains from an enslaved man, likely quoting Josiah Wedgwood's famous symbol of British abolition.

Remembered as one of the foremost illustrators of the 19th-century, Darley was also one of the most well-respected designers of American bank notes of his day. He completed hundreds of bank note designs in his lifetime that set a standard for the period. These designs often featured idealized or allegorical images illustrating moments from the history of the United States, as can be seen in this work. It is known that as early as 1863 Darley was creating bank note vignettes that featured emancipation motifs (see Inventing the American Past: The Art of F.O.C. Darley, Nancy Finlay, The New York Public Library, 1999, #121: Freedom for the Slaves).

Terry A. Bryan notes in his catalogue of Darley's bank note designs, Art & Commerce Intersect: The Bank Note Vignettes of Felix Octavius Carr Darley (Paper Money, March/April 2007), that a bank note designed by Darley was issued by The Continental Bank Note Company (CBNC) in July 1867, and is described by Bryan with the short description, "American Soldier and Slave." In the same year that the CBNC issued that bank note, the Manhattan Engraving Co. produced a print of this illustration entitled "Emancipation", which was published by E. Parsloe of 52 Broad Street, Buffalo, New York. It is our presumption that that engraving of this illustration was also featured on the CBNC bank note. Albert Boime, in his The Art of Exclusion: Representing Blacks in the Nineteenth Century (Smithsonian, 1990), discusses this image as having been a bank note design, as well as reproduces the Manhattan Engraving Co. version.