Books and Manuscripts

Currier, (Nathaniel), and (James) Ives
Catching a Trout…
New York: Currier & Ives, 1854. Hand-colored lithograph, by Otto Knirsch after A.F. Tait; 20 x 26 in. (508 x 660 mm). Laid down on heavy paper; trimmed along edges; mat burn; faint scattered spotting. 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 0938; Conningham 845; The New Best 50, 49

A handsome hand-colored lithograph of this fishing scene, showing three men catching trout near Tuxedo, New York. 

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.