Table Of ContentT 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
