Original glass plate negative of Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop Honus Wagner produced by noted Chicago photographer Francis Burke. The image pictures Wagner crouching with bat in hand on the sideline at Chicago's West Side Grounds. The etching on the side of the negative reads "Hans Wagner Pittsburg." Although no year is listed, the uniform style and Wagner's youthful visage suggest a date of circa 1906. An exceptional and early image of the greatest player of his era. The negative (7x5") displays minor flaws, mainly along the periphery, common to nearly all early 1900s glass negatives, but the central image is largely unaffected. There is also a small white label affixed in the upper right corner of the reverse. VG. 

Francis P. Burke (1871-1949) was a prominent Chicago newspaper photographer whose work ranged far beyond baseball. He took thousands of images of immigrant life in Chicago and, in 1912, opened a photo studio with Henry A. Atwell (1879-1949), known as Burke & Atwell, that specialized in theatrical, magazine, and newspaper images. Sometime prior to 1929, Burke severed his partnership with Atwell and opened another studio known as Burke & Koretke. Burke had been the Cubs official photographer in the early 1900s but was later replaced by George Burke (in a story that has been told many times, and which may be apocryphal, Burke lost his job as Cubs photographer simply because a Cubs employee couldn't remember his first name and mistakenly confused him with George Burke). Nevertheless, he was still a frequent visitor to the ballpark and between the approximate years 1909 to 1916, Burke earned extra income by selling his baseball images to various Chicago-based businesses, including Rueckheim Bros. & Eckstein (Cracker Jack), Max Stein, Novelty Cutlery, Crystal Pure Candy Co., Carl Joseph & Co. (tailors), Royal Tailors, and Irwin Howe's Baseball Correspondence League of America, which published a "Pitching Course." To baseball collectors, Burke’s images are ubiquitous and instantly recognizable. Despite the range and relative scarcity of his work, his baseball images are arguably among the best of the deadball era.