Sepia Saturday 217: A Camping Trip to Rival Any Other

My contributions to the weekly Sepia Saturday theme have suffered a little this summer, mainly due to the run of good weather that we've had, of which I've taken full advantage with plenty of hiking and other outdoors activity, following on from my rather lengthy excursion walking the Camino in northern Spain last year.

I could not resist Alan's image prompt this week, a black and white photograph from the Bergen Public Library's Flickr photostream depicting three classical composers Julius Röntgen, Frants Beyer and Edvard Grieg on an excursion on Mount Løvstakken in June 1900. Another image in the same sequence, and presumably taken on the same day, shows Beyer and Grieg indulging in light refreshments after their exertions.


Roosevelt on Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley, 1903
Stereographic print publ. by Underwood & Underwood
These reminded me very much of one of my favourite photographs which has been reproduced many times, but is shown here in its original format as a stereocard print published by Underwood & Underwood in 1903 (click the image for a larger version). Few of my readers will need to be informed that this was the 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) at Glacier Point, Yosemite, with the Yosemite Falls in the background. I haven't yet been able to determine who took the original photograph - and there were quite a number of adventurous glass plate photographers working in the area, right back to 1859 [2] - but I did discover several similar scenes which appear to be part of the same series, and were presumably taken on the same day.


Roosevelt on Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley, 1903
Stereographic print publ. by Keystone View Company
A second pose, very similar to the first but published by Keystone, shows Roosevelt again standing on an overhanding rock at Glacier Point, with the Yosemite Valley and the Yosemite Falls forming a magnificent backdrop to the north-west. The stereophoto is titled, "President Roosevelt's Choicest Recreation - Amid Nature's Grandeur - On Glacier Point, Yosemite, Calif."


Roosevelt on Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley, 1903
Unmounted print, unknown publisher
A third version shows Roosevelt seated, rather than standing, on the overhanging rock, with the photographer facing east and the charcateristic outline of Half Dome just visible at the right hand edge of the view.


Roosevelt and Muir on Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley, 1903
Unmounted stereographic print, unknown publisher
A fourth image, also widely published as a stereophoto, shows Roosevelt and another man - the identity of that man holds the clue to why the President was there, and why this series of images has become so widely known. Much has been written about the relationship between Roosevelt and John Muir, the bearded man to his left, and I don't intend to repeat it here, except to quote some of Roosevelt's own words:

It was my good fortune to know John Muir. He had written me, even before I met him personally, expressing his regret that when Emerson came to see the Yosemite, his (emerson's) friends would not allow him to accept John Muir's invitation to spend two or three days camping with him, so as to see the giant grandeur of the place under surroundings more congenial than those of a hotel piazza or a seat on a coach. I had answered him that if ever I got in his neighborhood I should claim from him the treatment that he had wished to accord Emerson. Later, when as President I visited the Yosemite, John Muir fulfilled the promise he had at that time made to me. He met me with a couple of pack mules, as well as with riding mules for himself and myself, and a first-class packer and cook, and I spent a delightful three days and two nights with him.

Roosevelt's party at the Grizzly Giant, Mariposa Big Tree Grove, 1903
Photograph by Joseph N. LeConte

The first night we camped in a grove of giant sequoias. It was clear weather, and we lay in the open, the enormous cinnamon-colored trunks rising about us like the columns of a vaster and more beautiful cathedral than was ever conceived by any human architect ...

President Roosevelt and party, Inspiration Point, Yosemite Valley

All next day we traveled through the forest. Then a snow-storm came on, and at night we camped on the edge of the Yosemite, under the branches of a magnificent silver fir, and very warm and comfortable we were, and a very good dinner we had before we rolled up in our tarpaulins and blankets for the night ...

Roosevelt and Muir with two Rangers, Yosemite Valley

The following day we went down into the Yosemite and through the valley, camping in the bottom among the timber ... John Muir talked even better than he wrote. His greatest influence was always upon those who were brought into personal contact with him.

Muir's three nights with Roosevelt at Yosemite in May 1903 has been referred to in a rather grandiose fashion as perhaps "the most significant camping trip in conservation history," with some justification. Muir, an ardent conservationist, prolific author and activist, had been visiting and writing about Yosemite for three and a half decades. He was the first to suggest that Yosemite's U-shaped valleys were carved out by glaciers, in stark contrast to the contemporary view of their origin as the result of catastrophic earthquakes. He had befriended naturalist author Ralph Waldo Emerson, was a co-founder and first president of the Sierra Club, an associate of literary naturalist John Burroughs, and was a close friend of influential scientist Joseph LeConte.

"Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter." – John Muir in a letter to his wife Louie in July 1888

"There! empty your heads of all vanity, and look ... Yes, I pottered around here ten years, and you think you can see it all in four days." - John Muir to John Burroughs in 1909


John Muir on a 1964 U.S. commemorative stamp
Ranger-naturalist Richard J. Hartesveldt wrote, in an article published in Yosemite Nature Notes in 1955:

This unusual meeting of two great conservationists had a strong influence upon the formulation in our government's land and resources policy ... The prelude to this meeting began a few years earlier when forests which had been set aside by Presidents Harrison and Cleveland were endangered by pressure from commercial interests who wanted the Congress to release them from Federal control. To John Muir, through his vivid writings, goes much of the credit for preventing the passage of such legislation.

John Muir, Preservationist
Celebrate the Century U.S. commemmorative stamp, 1998

The President became interested in the conservation attitudes of John Muir by reading Muir's enthusiastic writings. He indicated to the famed naturalist through California Senator Chester Rowell that he desired to make a trip to Yosemite for the express purpose of "talking conservation" with him ... After receiving a personal letter from Roosevelt, [Muir] wrote ... "An influential man from Washington wants to make a trip into the Sierra with me, and I might be able to do some forest good in freely talking around the campfire."

The President arrived dressed for the business at hand in his rough hunting clothes. He and Muir left the main party of dignitaries and slept on the ground at night, once in the snow, which delighted the President. The conversations around their Sierra campfires would probably fill several volumes, since both were prolific talkers. Although we shall never know all that transpired on this memorial outing, there is much evidence of the good which resulted from it.

John Muir featured on the California state quarter, 2005

John Muir was emphatic about the need for legislation to prevent archeological ruins from being destroyed by "pot hunters" and other collectors. The Petrified Forest and the Grand Canyon were foremost among specific areas mentioned. Perhaps it was at this time that the two conceived a workable plan which would vest the President with the necessary power to set apart as national monuments areas deemed nationally significant. The purpose was, of course, to save time when areas were in immediate danger of invasion, and also to circumvent opposition in Congress which might prevent many such areas from being established. The legislation was enacted in 1906 and is known today as the Antiquities Act.

Redwoods at Muir Woods National Monument, November 2013
Image Copyright © Brett Payne
Sadly I didn't have enough time during my recent brief stay in California to visit Yosemite, as it's been on my bucket list far longer than the term has actually been in existence (i.e. 2006). I felt it deserved more than the couple of days I had available, so it will have to wait for another time. I did, however, get a chance for a quick visit to Muir Woods National Monument - declared as such by Roosevelt in 1908, and named after John Muir at the request of the donors, William and Elizabeth Kent - an old-growth coastal redwood forest close to Mount Tamalpais, with my long time friends Bob and Veronique. Thanks, Bob and Vero, next time we'll do Yosemite.

References

Underwood & Underwood (Copyright, 1903) Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir on Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley, California, in 1903, stereograph (unmounted), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC)

The First Yosemite Photographers / Yosemite Photographers In The Early Days ... Incredible Challenges But Amazing Results, including A Thousand Words by Bill and Mary Hood, by undiscovered-yosemite.com.

President Roosevelt and party, Inspiration Point, Yosemite Valley, California, photographic print, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC)

Muir, John (1871) Yosemite Glaciers, New York Tribune, 5 December 1871, reproduced online by the Sierra Club.

Roosevelt, Theodore (1913) In Yosemite with John Muir, from An Autobiography (1913), excerpted from Chapter IX. Outdoors and Indoors, reproduced online by the Sierra Club.

Roosevelt, Theodore (1915) John Muir: An Appreciation, Outlook, vol. 109, pp. 27-28, 16 January 1915, reproduced online by the Sierra Club.

John Muir and John Muir's Influences, by the National Park Service.

John Muir (1838-1914) and Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), The National Parks, America's Best Idea, a film by PBS.

Geologic Map of Yosemite Valley, from Geologic Map of Yosemite National Park and Vicinity, California, U.S. Geological Survey Miscellaneous Investigations Series Map I-1874 by N. King Huber, Paul C. Bateman, and Clyde Wahrhaftig, publ. 1989, from the United States Geological Survey.

Sierra Club Historic Photographs, from the Sierra Club William E. Colby Memorial Library.

Barrus, Clara (1920) John Burroughs - Boy And Man, Chapter XVII: Work And Play In Later Years, from The Catskill Archive

Hartesveldt, Richard J. (1955) Roosevelt And Muir - Conservationists, in Yosemite Nature Notes, Vol. XXXIV, No. 11 (PDF from Yosemite Online Library), p.132-136, November 1955, article reproduced by undiscovered-yosemite.com.

Sepia Saturday 185: Ready with the Bulls-Eye, come rain or shine

A couple of weeks ago I used scans of a couple of amateur lantern slides to illustrate an article on Dovedale. This week's Sepia Saturday prompt of a rainy street scene gives me an opportunity to use a couple more from the same set, as well as featuring another recent purchase, a popular box camera which preceded the ubiquitous Brownie by almost a decade.


Unidentified couple seated on bench, c.1900-1905
Lantern slide (83 x 83mm) by unknown photographer
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
The delightful image depicts a couple enjoying what might have been a quiet glass of beer, seated on a bench outside a pub, if it hadn't started to rain. At least I think the white, nearly vertical streaks must be rain drops; after some deliberation I've decided that if they were merely scratches made during processing, they wouldn't all be roughly the same length (about 10cm). Since rain drops fall between 7 and 18 miles per hour (Source: Yahoo Answers), I estimate that this corresponds with a shutter speed of between 1/30 and 1/60 second. What has made this photograph possible is the bright, albeit slightly dappled, sunlight which accompanies the light shower of rain. The lack of self-consciousness in this candid snapshot is unusual, considering it was probably taken around 1900-1905.


Unidentified group seated on lawn, c.1900-1905
Lantern slide (83 x 83mm) by unknown photographer
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
From what I've been able to tell, the very wide-brimmed and low-crowned straw hats in this second lantern slide were popular shortly after the turn of the century, which correlates well time-wise with the high-collared, wide-sleeved white blouses and long dark skirts. Here a group of three women and a young girl, the last facing away from the camera, are seated on and around a picnic blanket, placed in the middle of a well-clipped lawn surrounded by shrubs and trees. They are boiling a small kettle on a primus stove and a teapot waits patiently on the corner of the blanket. Presumably they're in a private garden, as two chickens can be seen making an appearance from the left hand edge of the picture.


No 2 Bulls-Eye Kodak
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
The image would probably have been produced by contact printing from the original negative onto a thin glass plate, thus producing a positive transparency. Unless a portion of it was masked off - an unlikely scenario, given the composition of the shots - the original negative would therefore have been roughly the same size as the slide. The 83 x 83mm measurements of the square slides equate to the 3½" x 3½" format of 101 roll film and the short-lived 106 cartridge roll holder. The No 2 Bulls-Eye Kodak, originally manufactured by the Boston Camera Manufacturing Company in 1892, but later taken over by Kodak from 1895, was the first camera to use numbered paper-backed roll film. Both this and the No 2 Bullet Kodak, introduced in March 1895 in competition with the Bulls-Eye, used 101 format film, as did a number of other box cameras:

Camera	Film Format	Dates of Manufacture
Boston Bull's-Eye	3½" x 3½"	1892-1895
No 2 Bullet Kodak	101	Mar 1895-1902
No 2 Bulls-Eye Kodak	101	Aug 1895-1913
No 2 Eureka	106	Jun 1897-1899
No 2 Falcon Kodak	101	Sep 1897-Dec 1899
No 2 Bullet Special Kodak	101	May 1898-Apr 1904
No 2 Bulls-Eye Special Kodak	101	1898-Apr 1904
No 2 Flexo Kodak	101	Dec 1899-Apr 1913
No 2 Plico Kodak	101	Mar 1901-1913

Rotary shutter, No 2 Bulls-Eye Kodak
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Of all these models, the No 2 Bulls-Eye was the most successful, Coe (1988) estimating a total of roughly 257,000 to have been manufactured, and rivalled in sales during the 1890s only by its diminutive cousin the Pocket Kodak, which used the smaller 102 format film. Although I haven't found anything definitive about the rotary shutter used in the Bulls-Eye, other Kodak box cameras were manufactured with shutter speeds of 1/35 to 1/50 seconds, which corresponds well with my calculations of the exposure time using rain drop tracks.


Bulls-Eye held by Grand Duchesses Olga (left) and Anastasia (right)
Taken by unknown photographer, Imperial Yacht Standart, c. 1911
Images courtesy of Royal Russia & Jos Erdkamp
Jos Erdkamp has a wonderful example of a No. 2 Bull's-Eye Kodak, complete with its original carrying case, a film cartridge, an instruction booklet, and a portrait lens attachment. He has also written an account - unfortunately in Dutch, of his detective work (Erdkamp, 1995) unearthing an intriguing fact, that the Romanov family were amongst the many enthusiastic users of the Bulls-Eye camera.

References

No. 2 Bull's-Eye Kodak (1896), on Antique Kodak Cameras from the Collection of Kodaksefke.

f/Stops and Shutter Speeds, on The Brownie Camera Page.

RUSSIAN IMPERIAL YACHTS: On Board the Imperial Yacht Standart, on Royal Russia.

Coe, Brian (1978) Cameras: From Daguerreotypes to Instant Pictures, United States: Crown Publishers.

Coe, Brian (1988) Kodak Cameras: the First Hundred Years, East Sussex, United Kingdom: Hove Foto Books, 298p.

Erdkamp, Jos (1995) De Romanov Kodaks, in Photohistorisch Tijdschrift, Issue 3 of 1995.

Sepia Saturday 181: Gem Tintypes, Preservers and Wing's Multiplying Camera

The Sepia Saturday image prompt this week shows a cased daguerreotype of a young Texan woman, judging by the clothing and hairstyle probably taken in the 1850s or early 1860s. My contribution is not a daguerreotype, or the superficially similar and slightly later ambrotype, but it does have a superficial resemblance to both formats.

Portrait of unidentified woman, undated, c.1862-1865
Gem ferrotype mounted with preserver on carte de visite mount
Image © and collection of Brett Payne (Allen Album)

This tiny gem tintype (aka ferrotype) is mounted within a gold-coloured foil or pinchbeck preserver (aka matte), which is then attached with two small lugs to a carte de visite mount (58 x 97mm), itself pre-printed with an ornate oval frame. It was one of 47 cartes de visites in an album which I purchased a few years ago, portraits from New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ontario and Darlington (England). The pinchbeck preserver appears to be an imitation of those used for cased daguerreotypes and ambrotypes prevalent in the 1840s and 1850s, and still present in the 1860s, along with the carte de visite.

Detail of gem tintype and preserver

These foil-edged, card-mounted gem tintypes are not uncommon, but the subject of this diminutive image is rather nice - a clear image of a young woman with spectacles, ringlets and slightly rouged cheeks. Her hair is combed flat with a central parting and hangs in ringlets, almost entirely covering her ears, the fashion suggesting it may have been taken in the early to mid-1860s. The preserver measures 19.5 x 26mm, implying that the tintype is the standard ¾" x 1" gem format, although the oval-shaped portion of it visible is only 15.5 x 21mm.

Reverse of carte de visite mount
Taken by George W. Godfrey & Co. of Rochester, New York
Image © and collection of Brett Payne

The reverse of the card mount shows the two lugs which have been pushed through slots cut in the card and folded over towards each other to secure the portrait. Printed on the back are the following details about the photographer and process used:

Made with Wing's Patent Multiplying Camera ☞ ONLY At GEO. W. GODFREY & Co.'s SUNBEAM GALLERY Over 81 Main Street, Rochester, N.Y.

This deceptively simple fragment of print provides a clue to the origin of the gem tintype format, which was to survive for many decades and undergo several reincarnations. George W. Godfrey was a moderately successful photographer who operated the Sunbeam Studio in East Main Street, Rochester from the early 1860s until his death around 1889, but it is the name Wing which resonates. In the words of renowned photographic researcher and collector Mike Kessler, "after Simon Wing, photography was never quite the same."

Portrait of man with Simon Wing's Patent Multiplying Camera, c.1865
Tintype by unidentified photographer
Image © and courtesy of The Spira Collection

The tintype was invented in France in 1853 and became enormously popular in a very short space of time in the United States, being cheap and simple to produce. In the late 1840s and early to mid-1850s, Albert S. Southworth of Boston and others had designed and patented a number of daguerreotype cameras which, using a combination of several lenses and a moving plateholder back, could produce multiple images on a single photographic plate. Simon Wing of Waterville, Maine and Marcus Ormsby of Boston purchased Southworth's patents and applied the technology to the then new wet collodion process used to produce ambrotypes and tintypes.

Uncut tintype sheets of unidentified husband and wife
Images © and courtesy of Rob Niederman

In June 1862 Wing patented his own "multiplying camera" to take up to 72 tiny images on a thin metal plate, which were then cut up into separate "gems," thus reducing the cost per portrait considerably.

Improvement on Photographic Card Mounts
Patent No. 40,302 by Simon Wing, 13 October 1863

Original box for Ferotype (sic) Preservers
Image © and courtesy of Matthew R. Isenburg

The gem portraits could be mounted behind preservers on cartes de visite, also designed by Wing, making them seem larger than they actually were, and in a style somewhat reminiscent of cased daguerreotypes and ambrotypes.

Henry H. Hinckley's Gem tintype album, c.1861-1874
Image © and collection of Brett Payne (Hinckley Album)

A popular alternative was to insert them into slots in a miniature album designed specifically for the format. The gem tintype album of Henry Hersey Hinckley Jr. (b. 1853) of Massachusetts, shown above (from the author's collection), includes portraits taken as early as c.1861-1862, although the compilation may have taken place at a later date.

9-tube "Gem" wet-plate camera, by unknown U.S. maker
Images © and courtesy of Rob Niederman

Wing and other manufacturers made many versions of the "Gem" wet-plate cameras. Some, such as the one pictured above by an unknown U.S. maker, could be converted into a four-lens arrangement for taking carte-de-visite-sized portraits.

Unidentified young man (left) and woman (right), c.1862-1865

Gem tintypes (20 x 25mm) on carte de visite mount (60 x 101mm)
By Geo. W. Godfrey & Co.'s Sunbeam Gallery, over 81 Main St, Rochester
Images © and courtesy of Mike Rosebery and George Eastman House

Several similarly mounted gem tintype portraits from the Sunbeam Gallery have been found on the web, with a variety of printed frames demonstrating that Godfrey used this particular format for some time. Similar to the manner in which Beard and Talbot had managed their rights to the daguerreotype and calotype patents in the United Kingdom, Wing sold cameras, photographic materials and "franchise" licences to a large network of studio operators, and assiduously pursued through the courts those whom he regarded as infringing his patents.

Two portraits of unidentified men, c.1864
Gem tintypes (20 x 25mm) on carte de visite mount (60 x 101mm)
By E. Parker's Gallery, opposite Village Hall, Brockport, N.Y.
Image © and courtesy of the Library of Congress and eBay

 

These two gem portraits by E. Parker of Brockport have almost identical text on the reverse, indicating that they have been taken using "Wing's Patent Multiplying Camera" and providing further evidence of the franchises already put in place by then. A pencilled inscription on the back of the older man's portrait gives a useful date of February 1864. Kessler (1994) describes the arrangements thus:

When a photographer bought a Wing camera, he also bought a territory for a number of miles around. No other Wing cameras would be sold in the area for as long as the purchaser remained in business. If the photographer couldn't afford to buy the package outright, Simon would set him up with a pay-as-you-go program, with a percentage of the profits to be returned to the company until the debt was paid off.

Portrait of unidentified young woman, c.1864
By Maynard & Nelson of Milford
Image © and courtesy of PhotoTree.com

This gem tintype in a very similar style was produced at roughly the same time at "Maynard & Nelson's Picture Gallery, over the P.O. Milford," almost certainly with one of Wing's competitors' cameras, and most likely a target for the never-ending series of prosecutions.

Private Michael Malone, "D" Co. NY 14th Heavy Artillery Regt, c.1864
Taken by George W. Godfrey & Co. of Rochester, New York
Image © and courtesy of Mike Medhurst

By mid- to late 1864, Godfrey was already trying out alternative, simpler methods of mounting the gem tintypes, even though they were still being taken with his Wing camera. This example of a Union soldier's portrait in uniform at the Sunbeam Gallery in Rochester is mounted cartouche-style behind, rather than on top of, an embossed card. It is particularly useful because the subject has been identified from a pencilled annotation, and a revenue stamp is affixed of the back, thus making it possible to infer a fairly accurate date.

Malone enlisted at Rochester on 4 September 1863 and was killed at Blicks Station, Virginia on 19 August 1864. The blue revenue stamp, cancelled with a single stroke with a black pen, signified that a 2c Civil War federal tax, imposed on photographs costing 25c or less from 30 June 1864 until 1 August 1866, had been paid. While the portrait was most likely taken between the time of his enlistment and his company's deployment to Virginia in late April 1864 (Phisterer, 1912), it must only have been mounted after the tax had come into effect (Harrell-Sesniak, 2012).

President Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, c.1865
Copied by George W. Godfrey & Co. of Rochester, New York
Images © and courtesy of Cowan Auctions
George Godfrey continued to produce tintypes from the Sunbeam Gallery for a few years, although embossed and printed cartouche-style card mounts appear to have rapidly replaced those attached with foil preservers. The portraits of President Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln shown above are typical examples and were probably produced in large quantities in 1865 after Lincoln's assassination.

Wing Prototype Multiplying Box Camera, 1914
Image © and courtesy of Rob Niederman
Although the popularity of gem tintypes started to decline somewhat after the end of the Civil War, they were still produced in significant numbers throughout the 1870s and 1880s, and remained the format of choice for many travelling photographers. Simon Wing's cameras remained fundamentally the same until the late 1880s, when he and his son Harvey introduced a number of new designs, including the Ajax Multiplying Camera (c.1900) and the Wing Prototype Multiplying Box Camera (above) patented in 1914. Although only two of Harvey Wing's prototypes were ever produced, it is remarkable that the inherent concepts of these multiplying cameras were revived once again for the Polyfoto camera twenty years later, which I wrote about here on Photo-Sleuth three weeks ago.

I'm very grateful to The Spira Collection, Mike Kessler, Rob Niederman, Matthew R. Isenburg (via Marcel Safier), George Eastman House, Mike Rosebery, the Library of Congress, PhotoTree.com, Mike Medhurst and Cowan Auctions for the very useful scans of and information provided about items in their collections.

Update

By kind courtesy of the author, the late Mike Kessler, I am now able to offer you a PDF of the Summer/Fall 1994 issue of the Photographist containing the excellent article about Simon Wing as a direct download (click on the image above). Many thanks to Rob Niederman for facilitating this. It's an important resource to have available online.

References

Antique & 19th Century Cameras by Rob Niederman

Anon (1870) Who Infringe the Sliding Box Patent, The Philadelphia Photographer, Vol. VII, p. 45-46, courtesy of Archive.org.

Phisterer, Frederick (1912) 14th Artillery Regiment, Civil War, in New York in the War of the Rebellion, 3rd ed., Albany: J. B. Lyon Company, courtesy of the New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center, NYS Division of Military and Naval Affairs (2008).

Griffiths, Alan (nd) Revenue stamps during the American Civil War, on Luminous Lint.

H., Christine (2012) Civil War Revenue Stamps, on The Daily Postcxard, 19 October 2012.

Harrell-Sesniak, Mary (2012) Dating Old Family Photographs with Civil War Revenue Stamps, on Genealogy Tips from GenealogyBank, 14 November 2012.

Kessler, Mike (1994) After Simon Wing Photography Was Never Quite the Same, in The Photographist (Journal of the Western Photographic Collectors Association), No 102 (Summer 1994), p.6-47.

Safier, Marcel (2012) The Gem & Carte de Visite Tintype

Portrait of a portraitist and local celebrity: Edward Foster (1762-1865) - Part 1

A couple of years ago Virginia Silvester sent me these intriguing scans of the front and reverse of a carte de visite portrait (1) by John Burton & Sons (2) in her collection of old family photographs, an almost identical view to one that I had scanned at the Derby Local Studies Library (3) a few months earlier.


By the time John Burton and his sons opened their third branch studio on the top floor above the bookshop of Messrs. Clulow & Sons in Victoria Street, Derby on 2 February 1863 (4, 5), they had half a decade of experience in the photographic business. They demonstrated not merely a proficiency in portraiture, but also some considerable astuteness in the marketing of their services. Faced with stiff competition from well established practitioners such as Thomas Roberts, James Brennen, George Bristow, E.N. Charles, William Pearson and Richard Keene, a pliable reporter from The Derby Mercury was inivited to the gallery. He duly supplemented the first of a regular series of Burton & Sons advertisements in that newspaper with a most favourable report (6):

"... we have since had an opportunity of inspecting a very large number of Mr. Burton's specimens. In one very large and handsome group of Volunteer officers these qualities are as palpable as in the exquisitely beautiful cartes-de-visite; and in the portraits of Lord and Lady Stamford delicate colouring is also apparent. Mr. Burton has succeeded in producing an admirably correct group of portraits of Ensign Turner, Colour-Sergeant Pratt, and Corporal Clulow, of the Derby Volunteers, in uniform. A visit to Mr. Burton' s Gallery, at Messrs. Clulow's, will afford very agreeable entertainment to every man of taste.

This type of advertorial, hand in hand with the celebrity endorsement, was evidently an accepted practice even a century and a half ago. Hand coloured photographs of volunteer soldiers in magnificent uniforms - such as that shown above, from the Derby studio of John Roberts (7) - as well as genteel portraits of members of the higher echelons of Derby society, provided valuable draw cards for clients from among the "ordinary" folk of Derby.


The reporter in question may even have been the Henry Latimer Kemp (1832-1869), newspaper writer at The Derby Mercury, whose vignetted Burton studio portrait - shown above - has survived in the Derby Local Studies Library collection (8). The Burtons continued to entice a wide range of clientele into the studio, and were even prepared to venture further afield to capture the more important clients (9):

The pictures obtained by this firm ... are remarkable for their sharpness of detail and brilliancy of light and shade. In the cartes de visite of several county families, these excellences are strikingly prominent, particularly in those of the Earl of Harrington, and of other members of the family recently taken by the Messrs. Burton, at Elvaston Castle. The admiration of the lover of art will be excited by an inspection of some of their fine studies of dramatic characters now in the course of completion. Mr. John Coleman as Hamlet, and Miss Caroline Carson as the Queen, considered as examples of pure photography, may fairly claim to be numbered among the gems of this fascinating art.

An advertisement in early May boldly proclaimed the ultimate conquests, asserting Her Majesty the Queen, H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, and H.R.H. the Princess of Wales as recent studio patrons on successive days (10), although newspaper accounts of royal movements during this period (29 April to 1 May) by this author render such claims highly unlikely (11). Following a practice common to many practitioners around the country, however, they soon took the liberty of embellishing the reverse of their card mounts with the royal coat of arms and the names of their noble clients (as shown above). By December that year their newspaper advertisements included "the nobility and gentry of the Midland counties" among their valued customers, in additon to "extraordinary advantages for photographing children." (12)


In the 1864 edition of Wright's Midland Directory, probably compiled in late 1863, and by which time a fourth Burton branch had been opened in Burton-upon-Trent, the firm took out a whole page advertisement offering a wide range of services, including "animals with the instantaneous process," and with a substantial list of prestigious patrons (13).


On 5 April 1864 they announced their appointment as sole photographers to the Shakspere [sic] Tercentary Festival (14), and that they would be working from "a commodious gallery adjoining the pavilion" in Stratford-upon-Avon from Monday 18 April. This occasion presented further business opportunities to the burgeoning Burton & Sons portfolio: in addition to the usual "carte de visite and other portrait" services, they offered "a series of Shakespearean views, comprising all objects of interest in Stratford and the neighbourhood," each photograph bearing "a facsimile of the Committee's seal." (15) During the event, they made the most of the presence of a number of "musical celebrities who created and sustained the interest of the last great Triennial Festival at Birmingham," inducing them into his makeshift studio for individual sittings. The separate negatives were then innovatively combined in a single commemmorative print, inferring ""that these talented personages met by concerted arrangement in a spacious drawing room, and that while engaged in social converse, the photographer successfully plied his vocation," and subsequently "exhibit[ed] in the artist's window, at Messrs. Clulow's, Victoria street." (16)

Such an environment was eminently suitable for an invitation to a portrait sitting to be sent to Derby's man of the moment. A contemporary inscription handwritten in ink on the reverse of the card mount not only identifies the subject of Virginia's portrait, but also helpfully provides some clues to the circumstances surrounding the sitting:

Presented to E Hayman
by the original.
Ed. Foster Esq
Decr. 5 1864. Taken on his 102 Birth-
day Nov 8th 1864 -

Indeed the copy held by the Derby Local Studies Library is similarly, but somewhat less informatively, inscribed, "Mr Foster Centenarian." Virginia explains:

"E Hayman was almost certainly my great-grandfather Edward Hayman, originally from Devon and en route to London via Liverpool and Lichfield. As far as I know, Ed Foster was not related, and was probably only a casual acquaintance."

From an account of an 1861 portrait of Foster and his daughter by fellow Derbeian John Haslem (17), we know that Foster was no stranger to photographic studios, and may well have used such portraits to enhance his celebrity status, as a means of publicising his commercial activities.

Edward Foster was an extraordinarily energetic man, in spite of his advanced years, who had been active in a wide variety of fields throughout his long life. After turning a hundred and attending a public dinner held at Derby in his honour, he set off on several lengthy tours to towns as far afield as Birmingham (18), Gloucester (19) and Huddersfield (20). From the tone of the newspaper reports, these towns had previously played significant roles in his younger years, although he was originally a Derby man and it was to Derby that he returned in late 1863. He was reported to be:

In full possession of all his faculties, with eyesight that does not yet need the aid of spectacles, intelligent and communicative, Mr. Foster is a marvel for his age. The charts of which he is the author ... have been under the public eye for many years, and have been adopted by most of the principal colleges and schools in the country ... the chart of the histories of Rome, France, and Britain has reached its 42nd edition, while altogether upwards of 120,000 copies of the charts have been circulated ... The charts are admirably adapted to be given at schools, &c., as prizes, and have been extensively used for that purpose.

While apparently healthy, Edward Foster, his much younger wife and their teenage daughter were in a poor financial state, and an application was made by the Mayor of Derby Thomas Roe for him to receive some sort of pension, in light of his straitened circumstances. The Derby Mercury of 2 December 1863 reported that a letter had been received from the Prime Minister Lord Palmerston instructing payment of a donation of 60 pounds to Foster (21). A further article on 1 Feb 1865 (22) reported that:

For some time past Mr. Foster has been, from illness and consequent debility, unable to travel about the country in search of purchasers of his valuable charts, from the products of which the existence of himself, his wife, and daughter depend ... in order to minister to his temporary necessities, subscriptions should be obtained from all those who are benevolently inclined.

He died a few weeks later, at his home in Parker Street, Derby, on Sunday 12 March leaving "a widow and daughter in straitened circumstances." (23) He was buried in the New Cemetery on Nottingham Road on Thursday 16 March 1865 (24).


While there is plenty of verifiable information detailing Edward Foster's latter years, the material concerning his first half century appears to be mostly hearsay. At least I should perhaps clarify that by stating that I have been unable to substantiate many of the claims that have been made. Peter Seddon's recent article in Derbyshire Life entitled, "Edward Foster: A Master in Profile" provides an excellent overview of the remarkable life of "The Derby Centenarian." (25) However, much of the material has apparently been sourced from a book about Derby personalities that was published in 1866, shortly after the death of Edward Foster (26). Sadly, no sources are provided in either article. The engraving shown above (27) also illustrates this book, and appears to have been taken from the 1863 Burton portrait.

The important aspect, at least from the point of view of this article, and one about which there is little doubt, is that, after 25 years of service with the 20th Regiment of Foot, he discovered an artistic propensity and became a painter of miniature portraits and silhouettes. He subsequently forged this into a career which was to serve him well for several decades, at least until he was well into his seventies.

I have written previously about silhouette portraiture, and its relationship with early portrait photography, in an article about William Seville (28). In Part 2 of this series I will discuss Foster's early life in the miltary and as a silhouettist in further detail, and explore how he dealt with the rapid incursion of photographic portraiture into the silhouette business in a very different manner to the way that Seville did.

References

(1) Carte de visite portrait of Edward Foster, dated 8 November 1864, by John Burton & Sons of Leicester, Derby, Birmingham, Nottingham & Burton-upon-Trent, Collection of Virginia Silvester, Reproduced by permission.

(2) Profile & Portfolio of John Burton & Sons, Derbyshire Photographers & Photographic Studios, web page by Brett Payne

(3) Carte de visite portrait of Edward Foster, undated, by John Burton & Sons of Leicester, Derby, Birmingham & Burton-upon-Trent, Collection of Derby Local Studies Library, Reproduced by permission.

(4) Advertisement, The Derby Mercury, 28 January 1863, 19th Century British Library Newspapers from Gale CENGAGE Learning


(5) Advertisement, The Derby Mercury, 18 February 1863, 19th Century British Library Newspapers from Gale CENGAGE Learning


(6) The Photographic Art, The Derby Mercury, 18 February 1863, 19th Century British Library Newspapers from Gale CENGAGE Learning

(7) Carte de visite portrait of unidentified militia soldier, undated but possibly taken c.1865-1868, by John Roberts of 26 Osmaston Street, Derby, Collection of Michael Jones, Reproduced by permission.

(8) Carte de visite portrait of H.L. Kemp, undated but probably taken c.1863-1864, by John Burton & Sons of Leicester, Derby, Birmingham & Burton-upon-Trent, Collection of Derby Local Studies Library, Reproduced by permission.

(9) Photography, The Derby Mercury, 11 March 1863, 19th Century British Library Newspapers from Gale CENGAGE Learning

(10) Advertisement, The Derby Mercury, 6 May 1863, 19th Century British Library Newspapers from Gale CENGAGE Learning

(11) The Court, Daily News, 30 April, 1 May & 4 May 1863, 19th Century British Library Newspapers from Gale CENGAGE Learning

(12) Advertisement, The Derby Mercury, 30 Dec 1863, 19th Century British Library Newspapers from Gale CENGAGE Learning

(13) Anon (1864) Wright's Midland Directory, Leicester & Loughborough, with Burton-on-Trent, C.N. Wright, Victoria Street, from Historical Directories by the University of Leicester

(14) Carte de visite portrait, undated but probably taken c.1866-1868, by John Burton & Sons of Leicester, Derby, Nottingham, Melton Mowbray & Burton-upon-Trent, Collection of Brett Payne

(15) Advertisment, The Birmingham Daily Post, 5 April 1864, 19th Century British Library Newspapers from Gale CENGAGE Learning

(16) Advertisement, The Derby Mercury, 22 Jun 1864, 19th Century British Library Newspapers from Gale CENGAGE Learning

(17) Haslem, John (1882) Silhouettes, or Black Profile Portraits, Notes and Queries, Oxford Journals, Volume s6-VI, Number 133, p. 57-58. Available at Google Books [Accessed 6 Apr 2010]

(18) A Veteran, The Derby Mercury, 7 May 1862, 19th Century British Library Newspapers from Gale CENGAGE Learning

(19) The Derby Centenarian, The Derby Mercury, 28 Oct 1863, 19th Century British Library Newspapers from Gale CENGAGE Learning

(20) Untitled, The Derby Mercury, 9 Dec 1863, 19th Century British Library Newspapers from Gale CENGAGE Learning

(21) Mr Edward Foster, the Centenarian, The Derby Mercury, 2 Dec 1863, 19th Century British Library Newspapers from Gale CENGAGE Learning

(22) Mr Foster, the Centenarian, The Derby Mercury, 1 Feb 1865, 19th Century British Library Newspapers from Gale CENGAGE Learning

(23) Deaths, The Derby Mercury, 15 Mar 1865, 19th Century British Library Newspapers from Gale CENGAGE Learning

(24) Untitled, The Derby Mercury, 22 Mar 1865, 19th Century British Library Newspapers from Gale CENGAGE Learning

(25) Seddon, Peter (2009) Edward Foster: A Master in Profile, (Derbyshire's Artistic Heritage), Derbyshire Life, July 2009, p.170-173.

(26) Robinson, Joseph Barlow (1866) Derbyshire Gatherings: A fund of delight for the antiquary, the historian, the topographer, the biographer, and the general reader ..., London: J.R. Smith, 106p, (Mr. Edward Foster, The Derby Centenarian, p. 81-84), Available online at the Internet Archive [Accessed 5 April 2010].

(27) Engraving of Mr. Edward Foster, Centenarian by uknown artist, in Robinson (1866).

(28) Payne, Brett (2009) William Seville (1797-1866), silhouette and photographic artist, Photo-Sleuth, 17 Sep 2009.

CDVs - a new Medium for Portraits of Famous People

I've written in a previous post about how the carte de visite became wildly popular in the 1860s, mostly due to its low cost. Part of this popularity appears to have been due to the new fad for collecting pictures of famous people. Such cdvs are now enjoying a resurgence in popularity, and can fetch considerable prices on eBay. Reproduced below are two from my own collection.


As a young man Robert Moffat (1795-1883) was sent by the London Missionary Society to Africa in 1816. He and his wife Mary settled at Kuruman, where they built a mission and remained there until 1870, when they returned to England. They had ten children, their oldest daughter Mary marrying famous African explorer, David Livingstone (1813-1873). During his time in southern Africa, Moffat made several journeys into neighbouring regions such as Matabeleland (later in Rhodesia, now part of Zimbabwe), and published accounts of the trips both through the Royal Geographic Society and as a book, Missionary Labours and Scenes in South Africa (1842). His grandson Howard Unwin Moffat (1869-1951) subsequently served as prime minister of Southern Rhodesia from 1927 to 1933. According to Wikipedia, "His government passed the 1930 Land Apportionment Act, which defined the pattern of land allocation and ownership and is viewed as being one of the ultimate causes of the land disputes in Zimbabwe from 2000." To explain my interest in this particular cdv, one of Robert's descendants was a friend of mine while I was a school boy growing up in the Eastern Districts of Rhodesia.


The pair in the second example were amongst the most popular non-royal subjects for cartes de visite in the 1860s and 1870s, which was probably the heyday for the Victorian phase of this collecting craze. Mr & Mrs General Tom Thumb were creations of the impresario P.T. Barnum (of Barnum & Bailey fame). The midgets' real names were Charles Sherwood Stratton (1838-1883) and Lavinia Warren Bump (1841-1919). (Of course, he wasn't a general at all, or even a soldier.) They were married on 10 February 1863 at Grace Episcopal Church, New York City, the reception at the Metropolitan Hotel being a huge social occasion with over 2000 guests. This particular portrait appears to be one of a series taken by reknowned American photographer Mathew Brady (1822-1896) on the day of the wedding, and subsequently licensed to E. & H.T. Anthony, publishers of 501 Broadway, New York. An article forming part of a presentation of Brady's portraits by the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution includes the following:

Mr. and Mrs. General Tom Thumb
On February 10, 1863, "The Little Queen of Beauty" married international celebrity "General Tom Thumb" in a lavish ceremony at New York's fashionable Grace Church. The two performers enjoyed a true romance before announcing their engagement, which Tom Thumb's employer, P. T. Barnum , promoted to the hilt. For weeks before the wedding, crowds of 20,000 or more paid $3,000 a day to see the bride-to-be and her engagement ring. Barnum received 15,000 requests for tickets to the reception (which cost $75 each). On the wedding day, crowds blocked Broadway for hours, and newspapers published pages of detailed descriptions of the "Fairy Wedding," the gifts and the guests, who included New York's most fashionable families. Barnum completed the wedding party with best man "Commodore" George Nutt and Minnie Bump, Lavinia's actual sister, and for years the group toured the globe, eventually reaching Japan, China, Australia, and India. Brady made many carte-de-visite photographs in preparation for the wedding, an arrangement that doubtless profited everyone, including the performers, who sold portraits wherever they appeared.

Another of Brady's portraits, including the bridal couple with the officiating minister and witnesses, "Commodore" G.W.M Nutt (another of Barnum's protegés) and Lavinia's sister Minnie Warren, is shown below.


I was intrigued by the "signatures" of Charles and Lavinia Stratton on the reverse of the card mount, imagining the happy couple signing thousands upon thousands of them. However, a close examination and comparison with other examples found on the net show that they are not just similar, but identical, and must be printed facsimiles printed on the card. The carte de visite shown below, currently attracting bids of over £40 on eBay, picturing Minnie Warren and Charles and Lavinia Stratton, may have been taken in London on one of their visits to England, and published by the ubiquitous London Stereoscopic & Photographic Company (who also produced the Robert Moffat cdv above).


Another feature of these portraits of famous people - at least on those from the US - is that they were often blind stamped with marks, symbols or monograms, possibly indicating that the photographs had been copyrighted. Two of these (a flag and the initials CAW, or perhaps GAW/GWA/WAG) can be seen on the reverse of the London Stereoscopic cdv of the Stratton-Warren family above. The cdv of the Strattons published by Anthony shows similar, but not identical, blind stamp marks on the front. If any reader can shed light on these marks, what they mean, and how to interpret them, I would be most grateful (email me).