May 15, 2008 - Sale 2146

Sale 2146 - Lot 258

Price Realized: $ 5,040
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
WATKINS, CARLETON E. (1829-1916)/ TABER, ISAIAH (1830-1912)
"El Capitan, 3,300 feet, Yosemite, California." Mammoth albumen print, 20x16 inches (52x42 cm.), on the original mount, with a title, Taber's credit and number 677 in the negative. 1881-85; printed circa 1885
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

CARLETON E. WATKINS & ISAIAH TABER

One of San Francisco's best -nown photographers was Carleton E. Watkins, who gained international fame in the 1860's for his views of the Yosemite Valley. Following his expedition to Yosemite, Watkins' reputation was securely established, and for the next two decades he created some of the finest American landscape photographs of the nineteenth century.


From the outset of his career, Watkins searched for ways to bring his subjects alive to those unable to experience them firsthand. Hampered by the limited size of his traditional camera, Watkins asked a cabinetmaker to build a huge camera for him capable of making negatives measuring 18 by 22 inches, called mammoth plates. With this instrument, Watkins was able to capture the enormous scale of the vast landscapes of the American West as well as its intricate details.

He transported this large, heavy camera, with tripod, glass plates, and a portable darkroom, to the most forbidding spots, and consistently returned with images of superb technical quality. With his stereo and mammoth plate cameras, he made photographs of the area's sublime views and distinctive geology.


Bringing rich and rare sights to a worldwide audience, his efforts in Yosemite produced countless photographs, including about two thousand stereo views. In 1870, the "European Art Journal" exclaimed that it was "no small satisfaction to credit an American artist for the great Yosemite Pictures." Watkins was also hailed on the East Coast for capturing the "attitudes of nature."

In 1865, Watkins became official photographer for the California State Geological Survey. He opened his own Yosemite Art Gallery in San Francisco two years later. A poor businessman, he declared bankruptcy in 1875, and his negatives and gallery were sold to photographer Isaiah Taber, who began to publish Watkins's images under his own name.


Now without inventory, Watkins began again with a 'New Series' of photographs, including a wide variety of subjects and formats, and also returning to many of the sites previously captured in his 'Old Series' of images. He continued to photograph, and seven years later became manager of the Yosemite Art Gallery, then under different ownership. The San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 destroyed the contents of his studio, which he had intended to preserve at Stanford University.