George Bellows's Men of the Docks

What have a Lamport & Holt steamer, the Brooklyn Bridge, and John Jacob Astor in common ? The answer is : a painting !

Men of the Docks is an oil painting by American artist George Bellows. He made it in New York and finished it in 1912. The work shows you longshoremen on a wharf along the East River. The weather is cold, it has snowed and across the river we see the first sunlit skyscrapers of Manhattan. 

The work is now on display in London at the National Gallery. Purchased in 2014 at the price of $25.5 million, Bellows's painting was the museum's first major American painting. 

I invite you to watch National Gallery's curator Christopher Riopelle, who does an amazing job telling us what Bellows really painted and why the painting was particularly relevant in April 1912. Sure, you'll find out that a Lamport & Holt steamer, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Astors feature in his story as well.

Tip : You can watch the 26' video expanded up your entire screen by clicking the Full Screen button (the rightmost icon at the bottom).

George Bellows's 'Men of the Docks' | The History of the National Gallery in Six Paintings

courtesy The National Gallery

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/ 

That was interesting, wasn't it? It felt like making a journey through space and time. All that remains is for me to show you the share certificates I used for the collage at the beginning of this post.

This Lamport and Holt Limited share was issued on 7 Nov 1912, only a few months after George Bellows completed his Men of the Docks. Shipping lines painted their ships' funnels (chimneys) in distinctive colours to distinguish them from competitors. In the ship vignette the funnel is printed in three shades of grey. As you could see in the Bellows painting the real funnel colors were black, white and blue.

The Brooklyn Elevated Railway Company, founded as the Brooklyn Elevated Silent Safety Railway, was in 1884 reorganized as the Brooklyn Elevated Railroad Company. One year earlier, the Brooklyn Bridge was opened. The bridge carried pedestrians, horse-drawn vehicles and elevated railway lines into the 1950s. The large vignette on this 1880 issued share includes one of the bridge's suspension towers designed in Gothic Revival style.

image courtesy : Mario Boone, The Scripophily Center

The Wagner Palace Car Company made luxurious sleeping and parlor cars for trains. This share was issued in 1895 to John Jacob Astor IV. He signed it on the reverse (lower image). The Astor’s owned lots of real estate property including parts of Lower Manhattan, the Times Square area and the land where the Empire State Building is now. John Jacob Astor IV was the wealthiest person aboard the Titanic. Actor Eric Braeden portrayed him in James Cameron's Titanic, starring Leonardi DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. John Jacob Astor IV did not survive the Titanic when it sank on 15 April 1912, but his pregnant wife was rescued. 

F.L.

Previous posts

• Solution of scripophily puzzle no. 4
• Poll results - collecting motives 

Pioneering communication technology and lots more ready for take off at Spink

SPINK's latest timed scripophily auction went live earlier this week and ends at 11 AM GMT on Feb 16, 2021. This online sale presents about 600 lots of antique bonds and shares from all continents.

SPINK's e-Auction includes a large American section. The Utah Lithographing Co. S. L. C produced this stunning print for the Fairview Southend Mining Co. We've seen other lovely scripophily works by this printer, such as those made for the Salt Lake and Ogden Railway Co., depicting a tramcar and a mountain and lake landscape, and for the Dromedary Hump Mines Company illustrated with a dromedary. This 1906 issued share certificate shows a native American at nightfall watching the first star that appears behind the mountain tops. L(ot)534

For this sale SPINK specialist Mike Veissid selected a remarkable number of antique bonds ands shares from companies pioneering in the field of communication technology. Marconi needs no introduction, L292 is a share from Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company Ltd. Edison is represented with a £100 share in The Edison Telephone Company of Glasgow, 1880, L281. 

Here are some other fascinating items :

• Most of us still remember the fax machine. L290 Kamm's Zerograph Syndicate (1905), Limited, issued in 1906, is signed by Leo Kamm who invented a filmless movie projector but also a telegraph transmitting text that was printed at the receiving end. 
• Two 1911 shares in The National Telewriter Company, Limited comprise lot 296.
• Military commander and aviation pioneer Baden Baden-Powell signed L286, The Helsby Wireless Telegraph Company, 1910. 
• A share in The Kilduchevsky Mega Telephone Syndicate, Limited, L291, is signed by another aviation pioneer, Paul de Kilduchevsky.

The German Josef H. Reineke invented this wireless telephone system for use in mining environments. A demonstration of Reineke's system was given in 1913 at the Annandale Pit, Kilmarnock, belonging to the Carrington and Auchlochan Coal Co. It was stated that with a portable apparatus in case of an accident, when ordinary telephone wires would be broken, it would be possible to converse with entombed miners. Officials of Dinnington Main Colliery, Yorkshire, where the system was tested for six months, often spoke from the pit-head or the pit-bottom to an operator in the cage while in motion. They also communicated with success through a mile of solid coal. L299 in the auction.

source: The Electrical Review, Vol. 73 No. 1869, Sep 19, 1913.

Also prominent in the sale is a series of securities related to arms, explosives and weapons : 

• Probably the most splendid scripophily in this theme is a share in The Colt Gun and Carriage Company, Limited. Issued in 1906 it is embellished with vignettes of soldiers and machine guns, L306. 
• L312 is a share in John Rigby & Co. (Gunmakers), Limited. Rigby, one of the oldest gunmaking companies in the world became famous in the 18th century for its dueling pistols. 
• Hiram Percy Maxim is credited with inventing the firearm silencer. L311 is a Maxim Silencer Company, Limited share from 1909 with embossed seal depicting guns.

The Rexer Arms Company acquired the rights to manufacture the Danish Madsen machine gun in the British Empire. After a legal battle on patents Rexer changed its focus on producing the Rexer Steam Car, without success. L323, £1 shares certificate, 1906, vignette of aiming soldier 

There is a lot more to discover. Collectors of scripophily from South Africa, Rhodesia and Egypt will be delighted, as well as those looking for new automobiles, motorcycles and tobacco material !

Here are the sale's details : 

• Location : online auction only
• Date : ends on 16 February, 2021 at 11:00 AM
• Further info : see Spink's online catalogue with full color images here 

Into African and Belgian Congo scripophily? Then this top signature of Henry Morton Stanley will definitely interest you. As an agent of King Leopold II of Belgium, Stanley searched for the source of the Nile and explored central Africa. Detail from L303, W. T. Henley's Telegraph Works Company Limited

F.L.

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Scripophily Puzzle No. 4 - solution

In Puzzle No. 4 we were looking for a novel. This time, three scripophily detectives gave the correct answer. "A bit too easy" I was told. 

In order to solve the puzzle, I provided you two visual cues : details from the designs of a bond and a share certificate. Let's have a look at them.

The first image shows a logo consisting of the interlaced letters W and L flanked by two lions and a banner underneath. The banner shows some words. Click the image to enlarge it. You can't distinguish all the words but Compagnie, des, Lits and Européens must be clear.

Googling these words brings up links to the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. In the Google Images results pane you'll find a similar logo, and likely, an image of one of the company's bond certificates like the one shown here.

The Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits et des Grands Express Européens, in short CIWL, was founded by the Belgian Georges Nagelmackers in 1872. His business pioneered in luxurious on-train catering and sleeping car services. CIWL operated the famous long-distance Orient Express that originally ran from Paris to Constantinople (Istanbul).

The second image shows a fragment from a share certificate. We can read [H]ôtel de Constantinople, and you can also detect a stamp that mentions Société Française des Grands Hotels Internationaux. All-knowing Google tells us that we are talking about the Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul. 

The Pera Palace was built in 1892 for the CIWL. The company needed a suitable hotel at the final destination of its Orient Express. Among its famous guests were : Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Ernest Hemingway, Queen Elizabeth II, Alfred Hitchcock and Jacqueline Kennedy.

Using the words Wagons-Lits and book, or even novel, in your next Google search yields many results to multiple publications. So does Pera Palace combined with the words book or novel. Obviously, both are popular subjects.

A better idea was to search for the combination of all these words : Wagons-Lits, Pera Palace and novel, or, even better, Orient Express and novel. The outcome leads you to the solution : Murder on the Orient Express, a novel written by the English writer Agatha Christie.

Christie's famous book appeared in 1934. It brings the story of Hercule Poirot, a Belgian detective, who returns from the Middle East on the Orient Express. The train is stopped by heavy snowfall and a murder is discovered. Poirot's trip home to London is interrupted to solve the murder.

Agatha Christie stayed on several occasions at the Pera Palace from 1926 through 1932. It is said that she wrote there Murder on the Orient Express in her favored room, 411. Did you know you can still book her room for your stay in Istanbul ? 

Did Agatha Christie ever travel on the Orient Express ? As a matter of fact, yes, she did, more than once. Her first journey on the Orient Express was in late 1928, only a few months before a blizzard, near Cherkeskoy, Turkey, stranded another Orient Express for six days. And in December 1931, when Christie returned from her husband's archaeological dig at Nineveh, aboard an Orient Express, sections of railway track were washed away by heavy rainfall flooding. 

In scripophily, we have seen bonds and shares that were issued to or signed by famous authors like Ernest Hemingway and Mark Twain. Wouldn't it be a baffling mystery if a share issued to Agatha Christie would turn up in suspicious circumstances ?

To conclude, scripophily detectives DB and RS provided a correct answer, but is was SC who was the first to solve puzzle no 4.  Great job everyone. You are now entitled a portion of "eternal fame".

F.L.

PS 

• A nice collection of Wagons-Lits scripophily can be seen here on Scripocollections.com 
• Read about the Royal Mint's commemorative coin of Agatha Christie on CoinsWeekly 

 

Previous posts

• Poll results - Collecting motives 
• Watermarks in scripophily - introduction