A Collection of Original Native American Ledger Art, 1918-25

An outstanding, highly unusual collection of 51 whimsical ledger art drawings, executed by Sammus Gray Owl in lead and color pencil from 1918-25. The artworks depict various groups of anthropomorphic animals, reptiles, birds, and insects, along with a recurring native American man dressed in a dark suit. Each of these eclectic figures are strikingly realized with humor and wit, and are typically shown wearing or holding a top hat and smoking a pipe. The collection consists of two sketchbooks with 32 drawings executed on loose blank paper sheets measuring about 5½" x 8" and one smaller sketchbook with ten drawings measuring about 3½" x 5", together with nine large framed drawings executed on graph lined folio ledger sheets, some with printed column headers and page number. All three sketchbooks and the nine ledger sheets are signed and dated by Sammus Gray Owl. A few slight smudges, most sheets have one slightly irregular edge (from when it was removed from a bound ledger volume), all 51 artworks are near fine or better overall. According to a retained note, the artworks are likely from the Kenneth Webster Collection of Tribal Art. Kenneth Webster (1906-67) was a New Zealand collector and dealer of manuscripts and ethnographic artifacts associated with Oceanic and Native American peoples. Of the artist Sammus Gray Owl little is known. The 1900 Twelfth Census of the "Indian Population" of the United States identifies only one family "Gray Owl" residing at the Crow Creek Indian Reservation in South Dakota. In addition to presenting a wide variety of diverse anthropomorphic figures: ranging from small dragonflies, birds, and chipmunks, to large hogs, bear, and bison, including a mythical Centaur like creature with the upper body of a bison, Sammus Gray Owl’s figures exhibit a similar sort of whimsy seen in later Dr. Suess like characters. A remarkable, very scarce large cache of original ledger artworks. A detailed list of all 51 artworks is available upon request.…