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Steele, Thomas Sedgwick. Illustrated by True Williams, Benjamin Day, Aug. Will, and other Artists.

Canoe and Camera: A Two Hundred Mile Tour Through the Maine Forests. With Illustrations.

New York: Orange Judd company, 1880. 8vo (8” x 6.25”), pictorial gilt and black-stamped on green cloth, plain lower cover. Early inscription, frontis., [5], 139 pp., numerous b&w engravings, including 20 plates, 1 p. map, 1 folding map in rear pocket, 28” x 20”.

First edition. One of Steele's two classic accounts of canoe expeditions through the Maine wilderness, the other title being Paddle & Portage (NY, 1882). Canoe & Camera describes outings on Moosehead Lake, the West Branch of the Penobscot River, Chesuncook Lake, and elsewhere. Included here is one of the first maps published specifically for the use of recreational canoeists, “Map of Moosehead Lake and the Headwaters of the Aroostook and Penobscot Rivers, Prepared Expressly for Thomas Sedgwick Steele’s “Canoe and Camera,” by W.R. Curtis, C.E.” Later editions substituted a different map, which first appeared in Paddle & Portage.

Thomas Sedgewick Steele (1845–1903) was born in Hartford, Connecticut, where he attended high school and subsequently worked in his father's jewelry business. Steele studied painting and drawing and became a full-time artist in 1887. His specialized in still life paintings, portraying either recently caught fish, fruit or flowers. A member of the National Academy of Design and the Boston Art Club, his painting Net Results was much noted at the time and was the subject of a chromolithograph published by Prang & Company.

REFERENCES: Williamson 9474.

CONDITION: Good, wear to head and foot of spine; top edge of map pocket separated from cover; contents bright and clean; map very good.

Item #6153

Price: $450.00