Books and Manuscripts

Currier, (Nathaniel), and (James) Ives
Brook Trout Fishing. "An Anxious Moment"
New York: Currier & Ives, (1862). Hand-colored lithograph, by Ch(arles). Parsons after A.F. Tait. 22 1/4 x 29 3/4 in. (565 x 756 mm). Mat burn; repair in top left corner and bottom right corner; small chip in top edge. In mat and in frame; 31 1/4 x 37 1/2 in. (794 x 952 mm). From the sporting library of American adventurer, naturalist, and sportsman, Brooke Dolan II. Gale 0789; Conningham 703; The New Best 50, 38

A fine lithograph with bright hand-coloring of this trout fishing scene, showing a fisherman on the banks of a brook running into Long Lake, New York, in the Adirondacks.

Brooke Dolan II (1908-45) was an American adventurer, naturalist, sportsman, and book collector. Educated at Harvard University and Princeton University, he later became a trustee of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. During the 1930s he led two notable expeditions to China and Tibet, collecting numerous specimens that he sent back for the Academy's collection. In 1942, during World War II, he was recruited to serve in the OSS (precursor of the CIA) and traveled to Lhasa with Ilya Tolstoy (grandson of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy), searching for supply routes to China for the Allied Forces. During this time they established contact with the Tibetan government and met the seven-year-old 14th Dalai Lama--the first Americans to ever do so. He then joined the Army Air Forces, and the United States Military Observer Group in Western China, behind Japanese lines near Mao’s headquarters. He died in 1945.