?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 300 - $ 500
La Barraque, Christine (1868 or 1873-1961) Hastings Law School Class Photograph.
San Francisco: Boye & Habenicht, 1026 Market Street, [1897].
Large format formal studio portrait, depicting the class and professors consisting of thirty-five men, and two women, with La Barraque seated in the front row wearing a calico-patterned skirt and matching blouse decorated with a bold ruffled trim in white, wearing dark glasses, with her hands folded in her lap, because she is seated in the front and the photograph is so large, she is presented in a very visible and detailed way, the woman to her left was La Barraque's reader; photo studio's name in the print and embossed into the original mat upon which it is mounted, nicely preserved, inscribed in pencil on the verso of the mat, "Class Portrait, Hastings Law College '97"; 23 x 18 3/4 in.
La Barraque was the first blind woman admitted to practice law in California. She attended the California School for the Deaf and Blind in Berkeley as a young person and graduated with a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California in 1896. Precise information regarding La Barraque's attendance at Hastings is spotty as all of the school's records were destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the fires that followed it. This survival is notable, and provides better information about the time of her attendance. Also remembered as a professional singer and advocate for the rights of people with blindness and other challenges, La Barraque served for some time as president of the San Francisco Workers for the Blind, and sang at performances to benefit charities supporting the blind including an event where Helen Keller was in attendance, and on the same bill at another show that was headlined by Mark Twain.
