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Great Sale! Of Fine Oil Paintings Chromos, and Engravings, At $1.00 Each.
[Portsmouth, NH, ca. 1860s]. Broadside, 12” x 6.875. CONDITION: Very good, horizontal crease at middle, lightly toned. An unrecorded Portsmouth, New Hampshire broadside advertising a sale of paintings, chromos, and engravings involving the purchase of shares. Announcing a “Great Sale” of some 1200 prints and paintings, all apparently offered for just one dollar each, this broadside indicates that potential buyers could view the works at the store of Josiah B. Burleigh, across the street from the Kearsarge House (which, though first constructed as a house in 1866 by master builder and ship joiner Benjamin Franklin Webster for Col. Joshua Pierce, quickly became a hotel). Among the pictures advertised are the “elegant oil painting—‘Ships off North Foreland, Eng.’ In Heavy Gilt Frame,” the “beautiful oil painting—‘Cuban Girl,’ in Heavy Gold Gilt Frame,” and the “fine oil painting—‘Moses on the Nile,’” worth $100, $75, and $40, respectively. Interested parties are advised to “SECURE YOUR SHARES EARLY, as the whole number will be taken up in a short time, and you will never have another chance” at the offered bargain: “We shall limit the number of Shares to twelve hundred…for which we shall give twelve hundred pictures. The Pictures will be awarded…to the holders of Shares, by a committee selected from the Share holders, and every subscriber will have an equal chance to obtain the Elegant Oil Paintings at $1 each.” It is not entirely clear how the scheme worked, but shareholders were to find out “about the 1st of March” what the outcome would be. Josiah B. Burleigh (1832–?) was “a picture framer and fancy goods dealer at Portsmouth and Lewiston, Me.,” although by 1870 he was advertising a “Closing Out Sale” and by 1880 lived in Lewiston full time, working as a shoemaker in neighboring Auburn (Burleigh, p. 97). The Portsmouth Athenaeum records two other broadsides issued by Burleigh, but we have been unable to locate this one in OCLC or anywhere else online. REFERENCES: Burleigh, Charles. The genealogy of the Burley or Burleigh family of America (Portland, ME: B. Thurston & Company, 1880); Greenough Jones & Co.’s Directory of Lewiston and Auburn (Portland, ME: B. Thurston & Co, 1880); “J. B. Burleigh & Co. (Congress Street), closing out sale,” Portsmouth Athenaeum online.
Item #7934
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