Robert H. Vance
Robert H. Vance (* 1825 in Baring , Maine , † July 4, 1876 in New York City , New York ) was an American daguerreotypist , ambrotypist , gallery owner and landowner. As one of the photography pioneers in the American West , he is best known for his photographs of Northern California and San Francisco . Most of Vance's works are now lost and art historians count them among the great losses from the early days of American photography. In addition to his work as a photographer, Vance ran numerous galleries in Northern California. His collaborators included Charles Leander Weed and Carleton Watkins , who are now also among the big names from the early days of photography on the American west coast.
life and work
Early years
Robert H. Vance was born in 1825 to William "Squire" Vance (1759–1841) and his fourth wife Charlotte, née Holland, in Baring, Maine. His father worked as a lawyer and politician and led an unsettled life. Robert therefore grew up mainly with different relatives and at the age of 15 came into the care of Lot M. Morrill , the future governor of Maine . When William Vance died a year later, Robert inherited $ 12,000 , which was gradually paid out to him until he was twenty-third. In an 1858 court case, he stated that he had been working as a photographer since 1845. Peter E. Palmquist suspects that Vance paid for the necessary equipment from his inheritance. From the spring of 1846, Vance is proven to be the owner of a daguerreotype studio in Dover , New Hampshire . Also for the year 1846 is a partnership with a certain John A. Lerow, with whom he ran the gallery Vance and Lerow in Boston , Massachusetts .
Time in South America
In the winter of 1846, Vance embarked from New England for South America . His journey took him around Cape Horn to Chile , where he opened one of the first daguerreotype studios in Chile in Valparaíso at the age of 22. Martha A. Sandweiss sees this start-up as the first signs of Vance's entrepreneurial ambitions, which he would later demonstrate in California. Together with various partners, Vance worked primarily as a portrait photographer over the next two and a half years, but also traveled to other parts of Chile, where he took landscape photos. In August 1848, Vance traveled to Copiapó , where he came into contact with the mining of precious metals for the first time. Although the California gold rush had already started in early 1848, it was not until July 1850 that Vance closed his flourishing business as a photographer and gallery owner in Chile and moved to California.
First years in San Francisco
In January 1851, Vance announced the opening of a new photo studio in San Francisco. Immediately he set about producing large-format daguerreotypes of San Francisco and the gold rush areas of northern California to satisfy the great curiosity of the public on the east coast of the United States about the landscape and events in the far west of the country. Vance's photographs of San Francisco from that period are particularly noteworthy, documenting the state of the city before and after the devastating fires of May 4 and June 22, 1851. After Vance's gallery was also destroyed in the fire of May 1851, he probably went to New York in August to buy new photographic equipment. There he showed around 300 daguerreotypes in an exhibition entitled Daguerreian Panoramic Views of California . Although the Photographic Art-Journal rated the exhibition positively in October 1851, it was not a resounding success with the New York audience. Martha A. Sandweiss attributes this to the fact that the realistic approach of the daguerreotypes was less appealing to the public than the fictional representation in imaginative paintings of the time. The lack of interest on the part of the East Coast public in his works ultimately led Vance to return to California in early 1852.
After Vance left New York, his photographs from California initially stayed in the gallery of New York daguerreotypist Jeremiah Gurney . In July 1853, the daguerreotypist John H. Fitzgibbon , who works in St. Louis , bought the 300 photographs at auction. Until June 1857 their existence is still proven in a museum in St. Louis - after that their trace is lost. Martha A. Sandweiss comments on the loss: "[Vances Daguerreian Panoramic Views of California ] remains one of the great lost collections of early photographs of the American West, a holy grail for historians and collectors at the same time."
Return to California and first speculative deals
After a detour to Panama , Vance returned to San Francisco in late February 1852. In June he opened a new gallery in Sacramento , which was soon destroyed by the fire of November 2, 1852. In January 1853, Vance is again proven to be the owner of a gallery in San Francisco. In a newspaper ad from this period, Vance wrote that he differed from other photographers in that “he chemically treats and prepares his photographic plates differently than any other artist in California, which enables him to make the pictures beautiful, clear and beautiful to give the perfect color. "
In 1853, Vance was apparently wealthy enough to participate in land speculation. In February, he and two partners acquired 160 acres (around 65 hectares ) in Sutterville, south of Sacramento. He and his business partners apparently bet on the possibility that Sutterville would become the capital of California instead of Sacramento. In the hope of rising property prices, Vance built a large warehouse and a few brick houses in the town. But his plans did not work: Sutterville did not develop as expected and fell into disrepair with the upswing of Sacramento.
A network of galleries and partnerships with Weed and Watkins
In the further course of the 1850s, Vance opened a number of photo studios with affiliated galleries in various cities in Northern California. His staff included Carleton Watkins , whom Vance entrusted to run his Marysville business in 1854 . Vance transferred the management of a gallery in Sacramento to Charles Leander Weed in 1958 . Both Watkins and Weed are now considered by art historians to be among the big names from the early days of photography in the American West.
Vance's artistic achievements earned him a number of awards. In 1855 he won first prize for daguerreotypes at the California State Fair for the second time . In September 1858, 22 of his recordings were recognized as "the finest exhibited" at the Second Industrial Exhibition of the Mechanics' Institute of San Francisco . However, not all of his critics were favorable to him. In April 1857, the daguerreotypist Robert A. Carden wrote in The Photographic and Fine Art Journal that while Vance's Premium Gallery in San Francisco was one of the largest of its kind in the United States, his work was not “the best that the Photography has to offer stylistically ”.
Last years and death
Vance was so successful commercially that he valued his fortune at $ 40,000 in July 1860. His biographers Palmquist and Kailborn describe the year 1860 as the turning point for Vance. For the first time, he did not take part in the California State Fair . He also sold his lands in Solano County two years later. In 1863 he closed his gallery in Sacramento. His California career came to an end in 1865 with the closure of more galleries in Nevada County .
After his subsequent move to New York, Vance initially acted as a broker for shares in mining businesses. For several years he also pursued other speculative businesses in the Puget Sound area of the northwestern United States. The last few years of his business activity are in the dark. As part of the Centennial Exhibition , the first world exhibition in the USA, he showed his photographic works one last time. He died in New York on July 4, 1876.
Whereabouts of the works
Significant collections of Vance's surviving work can be found in the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley , in the archives of the California Historical Society , and in the Oakland Museum of California . The Huntington Library , California State Library , Oregon Historical Society , University of New Mexico Art Museum, and J. Paul Getty Museum hold smaller collections . Originals of Vance's 1851 Catalog of Daguerreotype Panoramic Views in California are extremely rare. The only two known copies still preserved today are in the California Historical Society and in the New York Public Library .
literature
- "Vance, Robert H.", in: Peter E. Palmquist / Thomas R. Kailborn, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West: a Biographical Dictionary, 1840-1865 , Stanford 2000, ISBN 0-8047-3883-1 , p. 559 –566 (relevant, with numerous details on Vance's career as a photographer).
- Martha A. Sandweiss: Print the Legend. Photography and the American West , New Haven and London 2002, ISBN 978-0-300-10315-1 , pp. 81-85 (brief outline of life with good context).
Web links
Remarks
- ^ Peter E. Palmquist, Robert H. Vance: First Photographer of California Indians? , in: The Journal of California Anthropology 5, 1 (1978), pp. 113f.
- ↑ Peter E. Palmquist, Robert H. Vance: The Maine and Boston Years (1825 – c.1850) , in: The Daguerreian Annual 1991, pp. 199–204 and 213f., Here cited from Palmquist / Kailborn, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West , pp. 559 and 565.
- ↑ a b Palmquist / Kailborn, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West , p. 559.
- ↑ "At twenty-two, the young American had become one of the first ten photographers to operate in Chile, already showing evidence of the entrepreneurial ambition that would characterize his later work in California", Martha A. Sandweiss, Print the Legend. Photography and the American West , New Haven and London 2002, p. 81.
- ↑ Vance later wrote that he was working on a collection of photographs "that would afford the information so much sought after and form a popular exhibition in the Atlantic cities", in: Photographic Art-Journal , February 1853, p. 126, cited here Sandweiss, Print the Legend , p. 83.
- ↑ A list of the works can be found in the exhibition catalog Catalog of Daguerreotype Panoramic Views in California , New York 1851 (PDF version via The Daguerreotype: An Archive of Source Texts, Graphics, and Ephemera ).
- ↑ Palmquist / Kailborn, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West , pp. 560f.
- ↑ "The remarkable accuracy of the daguerran views, the seeming realism that attracted such notice, was, in the end, less appealing than the fictive renderings of more imaginative paintings.", Martha A. Sandweiss, Print the Legend , p. 86.
- ↑ Palmquist / Kailborn, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West , p. 561.
- ^ "[...] they remain one of the great lost collections of early western photography, a holy grail for historians and collectors alike.", Sandweiss, Print the Legend , p. 85.
- ↑ "[The artist] chemicalizes and prepares his plates different from any other artist in California, which enables him to give that beautiful, clear and perfect tone to the whole picture.", Quoted here from Palmquist / Kailborn, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West , p. 561.
- ↑ On this and the following cf. Palmquist / Kailborn, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West , pp. 562f.
- ^ "His photographs are not in the best style of the art [...]", here quoted from Palmquist / Kailborn, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West , p. 563.
- ↑ Palmquist / Kailborn, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West , p. 564.
- ↑ On this and the following cf. Palmquist / Kailborn, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West , p. 565.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Vance, Robert H. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Vance, Robert |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American photographer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1825 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Baring , Maine |
| DATE OF DEATH | 4th July 1876 |
| Place of death | New York City , New York |