Ambroise Bernard Album

Carleton E. Watkins|Carleton E. Watkins

1870s · Albumen silver prints · Photographs

This deluxe "Ambroise Bernard Sompayrac Album" contains 101 albumen silver prints (10½ x 13"), which seem to have been cut down from mammoth-plate (18 x 22") prints. There are a dozen cityscapes of San Francisco by Watkins as well as views of the great trees and hotels in Mariposa and Calaveras Groves, towns and cities of California from Oakland to Los Angeles, and landscapes in Nevada and Oregon. The central section includes forty-two views of Yosemite. Since none of the photographs appears in any other collection, it is uncertain if they are by Watkins or another artist. Who else but Watkins could have achieved this level of mastery remains a mystery. The collection was assembled by Charles Sompayrac, a wealthy San Francisco businessman from Natchitoches, Louisiana, and presented to his brother Ambroise in 1877. The binding includes a monogram "AB" inset with gold, silver, and quartz that may have come from a mine depicted in the photographs.

Artist

Carleton E. Watkins|Carleton E. Watkins

Date

1870s

Medium

Albumen silver prints

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Gift of Carole and Irwin Lainoff, Ruth P. Lasser and Joseph R. Lasser, Mr. and Mrs. John T. Marvin, Martin E. and Joan Messinger, Richard L. Yett and Sheri and Paul Siegel, 1986