JAMES WALLACE BLACK (1825-1896) Boston, as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It. 1860. Oval carbon print, the image measuring 7⅛x5½ inches (18x14 cm.), the sheet 10⅞x8½ inches (27.6x21.6 cm.).
Provenance Lee Gallery, Winchester, Massachusetts
In order to achieve this bird's-eye view of Boston, Black ascended the skies in navigator Samuel King's hot air balloon, which was tethered 1200 feet above Boston Common. It is considered the first aerial photograph made in America, and was given its romantic title by none other than Oliver Wendell Holmes. In July 1863, Holmes wrote in the Atlantic Monthly: "Boston, as the eagle and wild goose see it, is a very different object from the same place as the solid citizen looks up at its eaves and chimneys. The Old South [Meeting House] and Trinity Church [left center and lower right] are two landmarks not to be mistaken. Washington Street [bottom] slants across the picture as a narrow cleft. Milk Street [left center] winds as if the old cowpath which gave it a name had been followed by the builders of its commercial palaces. Windows, chimneys, and skylights attract the eye in the central parts of the view, exquisitely defined, bewildering in numbers...As a first attempt [at aerial photography] it is on the whole a remarkable success; but its greatest interest is in showing what we may hope to see accomplished in the same direction."
