American Historical Ephemera & Photography

Large 4to. Albumen photographic title page, albumen photographic map, and 61 albumen photographs of Yosemite, each measuring approximately 7 5/8 x 11 5/8 in. (193 x 296 mm), 63 photographs in total. (Exceptional tonality and contrast, each leaf neatly disbound.) Brown morocco gilt, spine in 6 compartments with 5 raised bands, gilt-lettered in 1, the rest tooled and gilt-decorated, gilt turn-ins, edges gilt by Bartling & Kimball, San Francisco (very minor rubbing at joint); black cloth folding case with dark green morocco spine label gilt. Provenance: Westerville, (Ohio) Public Library, on deposit at The Ohio Historical Society (letter of provenance).

Born in Oneonta, NY, Carleton Emmons Watkins moved to California in 1851 apprenticing in the photography studio of Robert H. Vance. First visiting in 1861, Watkins's photographs of Yosemite gained international acclaim. These 61 photographs, taken by Watkins around 1863, capture the majesty of Yosemite showcasing waterfalls, meadows, rushing rivers, and natural rock formations. In 1866, Appleton & Co. issued a pirated edition of his material and prompted him to copyright his work. He operated the Yosemite Gallery throughout San Francisco until the mid-1870s when interest waned and he was forced to sell his gallery and the first series of Yosemite negatives in 1875. He continued his photographic career in the American west before he lost much of his work in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

SCARCE: Only two near-complete copies have ever sold at auction, each with only 53 plates total (Swann, 1984; Sotheby's, 1978). OCLC traces only 3 copies with varied number of plates: The Huntington (62), Syracuse, Bird Special Collections (65, disbound), and Yale University, Beinecke Library (53). 

THE MOST COMPLETE COLLECTION OF WATKINS YO-SEMITE VALLEY IMAGES EVER OFFERED AT AUCTION.