ANOTHER PROPERTY
[SUPREME COURT, 1919]. Photograph signed by all nine Justices of the Supreme Court, including: LOUIS D. BRANDEIS (1856-1941), OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. (1841-1932), MAHLON PITNEY (1858-1924), JAMES C. MCREYNOLDS (1862-1946), JOHN H. CLARKE (1857-1945), WILLIS VAN DEVANTER (1859-1941), JOSEPH MCKENNA (1843-1926), WILLIAM R. DAY (1849-1923) and Chief Justice Edward Douglass White (1845-1921), n.p. [Washington, D.C.], n.d. [ca.1919].

Details
[SUPREME COURT, 1919]. Photograph signed by all nine Justices of the Supreme Court, including: LOUIS D. BRANDEIS (1856-1941), OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. (1841-1932), MAHLON PITNEY (1858-1924), JAMES C. MCREYNOLDS (1862-1946), JOHN H. CLARKE (1857-1945), WILLIS VAN DEVANTER (1859-1941), JOSEPH MCKENNA (1843-1926), WILLIAM R. DAY (1849-1923) and Chief Justice Edward Douglass White (1845-1921), n.p. [Washington, D.C.], n.d. [ca.1919].

Oblong (15 x 17¾ in.) including original heavy card mount. Sepia-toned gelatin silver print, embossed mark of "Clinedinst, Washington D.C.," slight oxidation in dark areas of image, otherwise in very fine condition. Modern gilt-edged mat, in a fine gilt-wood frame. BOLDLY SIGNED by the nine justices in dark ink in the wide lower margin of the mount.

A fine formal portrait of the assembled court in full judicial robes. At this date, the court included the only two veterans of the Civil War to serve on the court. Chief Justice White a former Confederate soldier appointed by President Taft, is seated in the center; to White's left, wearing his signature large white moustache, is Associate Justice O.W. Holmes (a Theodore Roosevelt appointee), who served as a Union soldier and was wounded three times (at Balls Bluff, Antietam and Fredericksburg). Brandeis, the first Jew nominated to the Supreme Court (by President Wilson in 1916) stands at the far left, flanked by associate justices Pitney, McReynolds and Clarke.

A rare image of the court and a rare conjunction of justices. We have only traced one other signed portrait of the court from this general period, showing the court as composed in 1914-1916 (from the Shochet Collection, sold Christie's, 20 May 1994, lot 95, $3,335).

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