Auctions: Picture this: Audubon and Wyeth works for sale

Freeman's sale on Thursday of books, manuscripts, and ephemera focuses on the pictorial, with items such as a copy of John James Audubon's The Birds of America and an Andrew Wyeth portfolio of color reproductions expected to bring top prices.

But the 595 lots in the sale, which begins at 10 a.m. at the gallery at 1808 Chestnut St., also include works that shed light on the era that produced them.

A prime example is an album of pencil drawings and watercolors done mainly by Joseph Charlemagne for Queen Olga of Württemberg in the days when many European royal families were interrelated. The more than 40 works illustrate their luxurious lifestyles.

Charlemagne, his name notwithstanding, was a mid-19th-century Russian illustrator; Olga was the daughter of Czar Nicholas I. She married Charles I of Württemberg, the southwest German state whose capital was Stuttgart.

According to its description in the auction catalog, also accessible at www.freemansauction.com, the album is an oblong, folio-size volume with blue gilt-lettered cloth boards and silken endpapers, inscribed on the front endpaper, "Souvenirs de L.L.A.A.h & T Monseigner de Royal Charles de Wurttemberg and Madame la Tulle Royal de Wurttemberg Grand Duchess Olga Nicolaevna da Russie de 1846 a 1860."

It is not the sort of reading material that will pop up on Kindle.

The 44 pictures, mostly pencil and watercolor, depict the lavish palace interiors of Olga's homes at Stuttgart and Villa Berg and her travels to such places as the Isle of Wight; included is a view of the Moscow Triumphal Gate signed by Charlemagne in Cyrillic. Also in the album is a watercolor-and-pencil picture of Olga's two Russian Borzoi hounds, Don and Smeika; according to Freeman's Kerry Jeffery, such dogs could be owned only by Russian nobility.

The book came from a local consignor whose father had acquired it at the end of World War II. The album has a presale estimate of $5,000 to $8,000, but Freeman's officials hope it exceeds that figure.

Several other lots reflect the elegant bookbinding art of the early 19th century, notably in England. It was an era when publishers would enhance a work's desirability by inserting a handwritten letter or even an image of the author in the volume, as is the case with a first edition of Charles Dickens' The Personal History of David Copperfield that is offered for sale.