Carleton Emmons Watkins
Carleton Emmons Watkins
American, 1829-1916
Watkins was born in Oneonta, New York in 1829 and migrated to California in 1851 in the wake of the gold rush. After initially working for several years as a clerk, Watkins learned to take photographs during his brief and happenstance employment with the San Francisco daguerreotypist Robert Vance in 1854. Between 1858-1861, Watkins established his own business where he took on portrait work and commercial photography for ranchers and businesspeople. In advance of his first major photographic expedition to Yosemite (1861), Watkins built one of the earliest mammoth-plate cameras in America that could make 18 x 20-inch glass negatives and produce prints comparable in size to paintings. This gigantic camera, combined with his technical skill, enhanced his ability to convey the Yosemite Valley’s grand scale and vastness in photographs that quickly won him national and international acclaim. The resulting works were sold in albums or exhibited in galleries from San Francisco to New York and London and won the praise of scientific and photographic magazines across the United States when much of the nation was mired in the destruction of the Civil War (1861-65). Their influence extended beyond photography enthusiasts to include writers, philosophers, and politicians, becoming a significant part of the cultural forces that led the United States Congress to pass the Yosemite Land Grant Act (1864), which essentially established America’s first national park.
Subsequently, Watkins continued to explore the American West as a photographer for both government-sponsored geologic expeditions, private companies, and industry. His travels took him as far north as British Columbia, as far south as the Mexican border, and as far west as what is now the Yellowstone National Park. While he was often employed to photograph mines, railroads, and other industrial activities, Watkins used these opportunities to take exquisite views that captured the natural beauty surrounding these sites along the Pacific coast. His resulting images played a vital role in establishing the West’s emerging economies, including mining, transportation, agriculture, and, most importantly, tourism.
Attempting to capitalize on his initial success, Watkins opened a commercial studio and gallery in San Francisco in 1867, where he sold his popular images of Yosemite and the Columbia River, among other landscapes. Watkins’ commercial venture prospered until about 1875 when his fortunes declined following a banking crisis that forced him to close his gallery and sell his entire stock of negatives to his creditors. While he continued to photograph and receive commissions after that, he never regained economic stability and again lost everything in the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake. After this disaster, Watkins’ health and mind rapidly deteriorated, and his family committed him to the Napa State Hospital for the Insane four years later, where he died in 1916.
Watkins exhibited his work widely during his lifetime in the United States and abroad and won medals at both the Universal Exposition in Paris (1867) and the Vienna International Exposition (1873). More recently, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1999-2000); J. Paul Getty Museum (2008-2009); and the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University (2014) have organized major retrospectives of his work.
Today, Watkins’ work can be found in numerous museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; Art Institute of Chicago; Detroit Institute of Arts; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
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