The Hulton Archive - Babe Ruth "Picture Perfect Baseball" Limited Edition 17x22 Fine Art Giclee on Paper #11/375 (PA LOA & PCV COA)

CLEVELAND, OH - MAY 20, 1934: Babe Ruth rips a single to right field at League Park. (Photo by Louis Van Oeyen/Western Reserve Historical Society/Getty Images).

This Limited Edition Fine Art Giclee is printed on acid-free museum quality paper with a hand-torn deckled edge. It is hand-titled, hand-numbered and features an embossed seal of authenticity from the Hulton|Archive Collection. Edition size is limited to 375 pieces.

Measures approximately 17" x 22" in size. SRP $695 ©Hulton|Archive of London

Photographer Louis Van Oeyen:

In the first quarter of the twentieth century, few photographers framed baseball’s early legends as cleanly and classically as the Cleveland-based pioneer Louis Van Oeyen.

Like so many who rank among baseball’s best photographers, Van Oeyen (1865–1946) was anything but a one-trick pony. He was a news photographer first and photographed a variety of topics, politicians, and events. Fortunately, his path also took him to the baseball diamond, where he was able to focus his camera on our National Pastime’s key players during the Deadball Era, a pivotal time of growth.

Van Oeyen was born in Dayton, Ohio, on January 17, 1865, and while his early years aren’t well documented, we do know he married a woman named Edith MacDonald in 1886 and had two daughters with her. He got his start in the workforce creating commercial signs in Detroit, but after that short-lived stint, he felt the tug of his home state and moved his family back to Ohio, opening a photography studio in Cleveland.

In the early 1900s, Van Oeyen hooked on with the Cleveland Press, but not immediately in the sports department. As an ace news photographer, he covered hard news at first, starting with the 1901 Lake Erie water tunnel disaster that killed 10 men (most of whom were workers known as “sandhogs,” paid to tunnel underground in an effort to improve Cleveland’s water supply). Over four decades, Van Oeyen would photograph all kinds of American movers and shakers, from industrialists Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller to aviation hero Charles Lindbergh to a number of U.S. presidents, including Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. He also photographed King George VI at his 1937 coronation in London.

But all of us who love baseball history owe a debt to the Cleveland Press for making sports part of Van Oeyen’s beat. The paper sent him to hockey and football games, horse races and early auto races, boxing matches, and even horseshoe tournaments. And, of course, he took on baseball.

About Hulton|Archive of London

The Hulton|Archive was formed after two of the leading historical stock houses – The Hulton in London and Archive Photos in New York. The Hulton|Archive is one of the largest collections of photography and illustrative material in the world containing over 40 million images.

The archival collection contains historically and socially significant imagery that documents the human experience through the 19th and 20th centuries up to the present day. The collection features images of The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Wizard of Oz and others.

The lot / autograph(s) includes a LOA and lifetime authenticity guarantee from Pristine Auction as well as an official Pop Culture Vault COA for authenticity purposes.

Authentication: Pristine Auction LOA & Pop Culture Vault COA

Due to the uniqueness of each item, please refer to the photos provided in this auction. We offer high resolution images of each item rather than a written description of condition.

This item is being shipped from the Pristine Auction warehouse.