Page 220 - Swann Galleries - Printed & Manuscript African Americana- Sale 2308 - March 21, 2013

405 ● (MILITARY—CIVIL WAR.) BOWSER, DAVID BUSTILL. United States
Colored Troops. Pair of carte-de-visite photographs of the obverse and reverse of David
Bowser’s flag of the 6th United States Colored Troops; both cdv’s are tipped onto a piece
of matting board with a printed description. (USCT).
Philadelphia, 1863 [1,500/2,500]
A PAIR OF VERY RARE
PHOTOGRAPHS OF A
FLAG CREATED BY
David Bustill Bowser
(1820-1900) for the
United State Colored
Troops, then stationed at
Camp William Penn.
Bowser created a number
of elaborate flags for the
Sanitary Fairs. He
enjoyed a career as a por-
trait painter of some of
the leading figures of the day, including Abraham Lincoln. According to Theresa Leininger-Miller,
Bowser was “one of the most commercially successful African-American artists in Philadelphia in the
19th century.” He was the cousin and student of the artist Robert M. Douglass, Jr. of Philadelphia,
one of the earliest Philadelphia African-American artists. While the Bowser family is known from the
18th-century teacher Cyrus Bustill to the 20th-century actor Paul Robeson, there remains little infor-
mation about the artist’s early life. Bowser’s surviving paintings tell a story of his wide-ranging career,
from the early commission of maritime and landscape paintings to the emblems and banners for
Philadelphia’s fireman companies and fraternal organizations.
404
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