Table Of Content

T HE S I L V ER C A N V AS T HE S I L V ER C A N V AS DAGUERREOTYPE MASTERPIECES FROM THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM Bates Lowry Isabel Barrett Lowry T H E J . P A U L G E T T Y M U S E U M • L o s A N G E L E S The sizes of the daguerreotypes reproduced here are Front cover: given using the traditional terminology from the CHARLES H. FONTAYNE and WILLIAM SOUTHGATE PORTER A Family Seated in Its Garden, 1848-1852 daguerreian era. Within each category, the actual Plate 71 sizes of the plates vary slightly from image to image. Back cover: Whole plate 8 'A x 6 T/2 inches JEREMIAH GURNEY Portrait of an American Youth, 1852-1856 Three-quarter plate 7x/8 x 5J/2 inches Plate 78 Half plate 5% x 4J/2 inches Frontispiece: JOHN JABEZ EDWIN MAYALL Quarter plate 41/ x 31/ inches The Crystal Palace at Hyde Park, London, 1851 4 4 Plate 6 Sixth plate 3% x 234 inches Page vi: JOHN PLUMBE, JR. Ninth plate 21A x 2 inches Portrait of a Man Reading a Newspaper, about 1842 Detail, Plate 25 Page viii: UNKNOWN AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHER Portrait of a Girl with Her Deer, about 1854 Detail, Plate 33 Page xii: PLATT D. BABBITT Niagara Falls, about 1855 Detail, Plate 62 Christopher Hudson, Publisher Mark Greenberg, Managing Editor David Featherstone, Shelly Kale, Editors Vickie Sawyer Karten, Designer Stacy Miyagawa, Production Coordinator Theresa Velazquez, Production Assistant Ellen Rosenbery, Photographer Printed by Gardner Lithograph Typeset by G & S Typesetting © 1998 The J. Paul Getty Museum 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1000 Los Angeles, California 90049-1687 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data J. Paul Getty Museum. The silver canvas : daguerreotype masterpieces from the J. Paul Getty Museum / Bates Lowry and Isabel Barrett Lowry. p. cm Includes bibliographic references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-89236-368-1 (cloth) ISBN 0-89236-536-6 (paper) i. Daguerreotype — California — Los Angeles — Catalogs. 2. J. Paul Getty Museum — Photograph collections — Catalogs. 3. Daguerreotype — History. I. Lowry, Bates, 1923- . II. Lowry, Isabel. III. Title. TR365.P38 1998 779' .074*79494 — dc2i 97-34415 CIP CONTENTS vii FOREWORD by Deborah Gribbon ix PREFACE by Weston Naef xiii INTRODUCTION i Prologue THE ORIGINS OF THE DAGUERREOTYPE The Magician of Light Fortified Vision The Dream Has Come to Pass The Secret Is Disclosed 23 Chapter i THE WORLD POSES FOR THE SUN 45 Chapter 2 STEALING FROM THE MIRROR 101 Chapter 3 THE ARTIFICIAL RETINA 133 Chapter 4 AN INTRUDER IN THE REALM 169 Chapter 5 CAPTURING THE MOMENT 187 Chapter 6 A NATION IN TRANSITION 211 NOTES 230 ROSTER OF DAGUERREIAN MAKERS IN THE GETTY MUSEUM COLLECTION compiled by Michael Hargraves 233 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 234 INDEX FOREWORD WHEN THE GETTY MUSEUM began to collect pho- rephotographing all the works included in it—work tographs in 1984, among the most notable were that has been ably performed by the curators, conser- nearly two thousand daguerreotypes, many of which vators, and other staff members. were made in the first dozen years after January 1839, Bates Lowry and Isabel Barrett Lowry have when the invention of this new art form by Jacques written an engrossing essay on the relationship of the Louis Mande Daguerre was announced to the world. daguerreotype to the artistic traditions of Europe Daguerre's success at producing images on sil- and America during the first half of the nineteenth ver-coated copper plates by the action of light took century. They have selected nearly eighty examples the world by surprise. So miraculous were these from our collection and written texts that provide pictures in the eyes of the first witnesses that the car- each picture a context and a sharper definition. In so icaturist Theodore Maurisset drew artists commit- doing, they have managed the difficult job of weaving ting suicide out of fear that the new medium would together cultural and art history with the develop- make their work obsolete. In reality, the daguerreo- ment of photography I am very grateful to them. type and subsequent developments in photographic This book owes its existence to the wisdom techniques prompted a dialogue between traditional and persistence of Weston Naef, curator of pho- graphic art and photography that continues to this tographs, who five years ago proposed the idea of day, illuminating and enriching both forms. publishing and exhibiting the best of the Museum's Photography now occupies an important daguerreotypes during the opening year of the new place in the Getty Museum. Over more than a Getty Museum at the Getty Center. I want to thank decade, the Museum has held forty-five exhibitions him and the other members of the Museum staff and published approximately twenty books and whose efforts brought this book into being. catalogues drawn mostly from the collections sixty- five thousand paper photographs. Despite this, our Deborah Gribbon daguerreotypes remain too little known by the pub- Associate Director and Chief Curator lic. This book presents for the first time a generous and expertly chosen sample of the Getty s holdings. Its publication has required treating, rehousing, and vii PREFACE THE GETTY MUSEUM is one of the few locations items each are included from the Auer and the Bokel- in the world where the several threads constituting berg collections. In addition to the works acquired in the early history of photography can be studied. 1984 from these seven collections, four daguerreo- Although the Museum's holding of early photo- types included in this book were acquired later: graphs on paper is much better known through exhi- Portrait of Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, by Charles bition and publication than its daguerreotypes, with Meade (opposite page i); Portrait of Edward Carring- the advent of this book the imbalance is remedied. ton, Jr. ("Uncle Ed"), by Jeremiah Gurney (Plate 8, The majority of the daguerreotypes in the col- page 48); The Arch of Hadrian, Athens, by Philippos lection were acquired as a block in 1984, and acknowl- Margaritis and Philibert Perraud (Plate 40, page 104); edgment is due to the efforts of a handful of serious and The United States Capitol, by John Plumbe, Jr. collectors who believed in the importance of this art (Plate 69, page 189). form and persevered to obtain the very best exam- The Museum holds an example of almost ples they could find. every subject that came before the cameras of the Of the major collections acquired in 1984, daguerreian artists: images made for experimental seven were the source of the daguerreotypes chosen scientific and educational purposes; records of his- for this book: those of Arnold Crane, Bruno Bischof- toric events; now-vanished objects from the built berger, Andre and Marie-Therese Jammes, Samuel environment; and, not least, portraits of people Wagstaff, Daniel Wolf, Michel Auer, and Werner famous for their accomplishments in the arts, litera- Bokelberg. The Crane collection, built with consid- ture, science, or politics of the preceding century. erable advice from the dealer George Rinhart, con- The Museum also contains a number of experimen- tributed fully one-third of the total (twenty-seven tal plates that chronicle the evolution of the special items), most of American origin. The Bischofberger technology involved with the daguerreotype collection, which concentrated on pieces of Euro- process. However, the largest number of daguerreo- pean origin, contributed sixteen. The Jammes collec- types in the collection comprises people whose tion contributed eleven items, all but two of French names have been lost to us and whose makers are origin. The Wagstaff collection contributed seven often unknown. Some of these are among the most items to the total, and the Wolf collection six. Four successful from the purely visual perspective. ix