The 18 x 24 inch prints up for offer here were issued in a Limited First Edition set of 7,700 copies. Titled “Battles of the Civil War”, 1861-1865, The Complete Kurz & Allison Prints. This oversized book was published by Oxmoor House, Inc., Birmingham, in 1976. A stated first edition as shown in the photos. Unfortunately we acquired it after a lot of the prints were removed.
With modern process, all attempts have been made and care taken to having made a special paper which would provide a comparable surface to that originally used. Paper especially manufactured for this edition by Strathmore Paper Company, Westfield, Massachusetts. Printed by Democratic Printing & Litho Company, Little Rock, Arkansas.
This print is in excellent condition with only some bumps on the edges and a small water stain on right side. Exceptional but affordable pieces of vintage art that could easily become family heirlooms. Ready for framing.
During the Civil War Louis Kurz was sent by President Lincoln to several battlefields and various camps to make pictorial representations which later appeared as Lithographs and became popular throughout America. Upon Kurz death in 1921, the New York Times identified him as a widely known artist and friend of President Lincoln, whose sketches of the battlefields of the Civil War were to be the first issued after the close of the conflict. In all, 36 battle scenes were published, many of them probably based on the sketches Kurz had made during the Civil War.
Though originally these were Stone Lithographs, some in as many as ten colors, modern methods allow true reproduction in four color process, a technique unknown when the original prints were made. Stone Lithography now is almost a lost art, an outmoded process that has given way to progress. Some of the prints are definitely artists conceptions, probably based on the best information available at the time. There are instances of mis-spellings and wrong dates. These have not been corrected in the prints.
