Background
Carleton Watkins was born on November 11, 1829, in Oneonta, New York, United States. He was a first-born of eight children into a family of John M. Watkins, an innkeeper, and Julia Ann Watkins (maiden name MacDonald).
Carleton Watkins was born on November 11, 1829, in Oneonta, New York, United States. He was a first-born of eight children into a family of John M. Watkins, an innkeeper, and Julia Ann Watkins (maiden name MacDonald).
Carleton Watkins was involved in hunting and fishing activities since early childhood. He also attended a glee club and sang at Presbyterian Church Choir.
The start of Carleton Watkins’s career can be counted from 1851 when he moved to California along with his friend Collis Potter Huntington attracted by the opportunities of the California Gold Rush.
While there, Watkins earned his living delivering supplies to the mining operations and then serving as a store clerk in a George Murray’s Bookstore. The position defined the further professional path of Watkins due to the meeting with a famous Daguerreotypist Robert H. Vance whose studio was nearby. One of Vance’s assistants who had to look after the studio during his absence left his job, and Watkins although having no knowledge in the area agreed to do service in 1852.
Vance taught him the basics of photography necessary for the stuff of a camera operator. On his return two years later, the daguerreotypist discovered that Carleton Watkins excelled in the art and was ready to set up his own business what he had done by 1858.
Since then, Watkins worked as a photographer on several commissions both from the periodicals and from individuals providing them with his pictures. So, his captures served as a base for James M. Hutching’s engravings published in his ‘Illustrated California Magazine’ and were used to document the mining estate of John and Jessie Fremont in Mariposa. The photos of the artist applied for evidentiary purposes in different court cases promoted his reputation as a photographer.
Another definitive moment in Watkins’s career was his trip to Yosemite with a mammoth-plate camera and a stereoscopic camera. He brought about thirty mammoth plate depictions and hundreds of stereoviews of Yosemite Valley which became the first pictures of the region seen by the inhabitants of the East. The reputation of a landscape master was assigned to him since then.
By 1863, Watkins had begun to sell his landscape stereoviews of Yosemite, the New Almaden mining region, the Mendocino coast as well as views of San Francisco. A year later, he was invited to take photos of Yosemite for the California State Geological Survey. In 1865, he took part at the Mechanics' Institute Exhibition in San Francisco, and two years later presented his works at the Paris International Exposition.
The same year, Carleton Watkins established his own public gallery named Yosemite Art Gallery where he demonstrated about a hundred of his Pacific Coast pictures along with thousand images in a form of stereoscopes. Unfortunately, having no business capacities, the artist soon lost the gallery in 1875 along with its artifacts copied by a photographer Isaiah Taber without sanction. Since then, Watkins began to mark his photos with copyright dates and titles to protect them from plagiarism.
Carleton Watkins started to restore the stolen negatives from the 1860s by revisiting previously photographed regions of Yosemite. The captures he made were united in a Watkins New Series. The series was supplemented by the photos he took during the next decade while traveling throughout California and western states. The subjects of the images included the Central Pacific Railroad, Sierra Nevada mining, Lake Tahoe, Big Trees, Virginia City, Arizona, the Pacific Northwest, Yellowstone, San Francisco, and the Bay Area.
Watkins received his last commission in the middle of 1890s from an American philanthropist Phoebe Hearst who asked him to take photos of her Hacienda del Pozo de Verona mansion.
Carleton Watkins was an accomplished photographer remembered as one of the pioneers who documented in his works the early western area of the United States.
Watkins’s captures of Yosemite Valley played a significant role in the preservation of the region by influencing the decision of the United States Congress to give it the status of a National Park.
Watkins’s photographic talent as a landscapist was marked by multiple awards during his lifetime, including Mechanics' Institute Exhibition Award for ‘Mountain Views’ and Paris International Exposition Medal for landscape photos.
Nowadays, the artist’s heritage is preserved in many public and private collections. There is a website aimed to promote information about his life and legacy.
The Deer Park, Menlo Park, California
City of Portland, Willamette River
El Capitan
Yosemite Falls (River View), 2477 ft.
Island in the Columbia Upper Cascades
Yosemite Falls, 2634 ft.
Steamer "Cascade," at the Lower Landing
Upper Yosemite Falls, View from Eagle Point Trail, Yosemite
Agassiz Rock from union Pt, Yosemite, 1878-81
Washington Column, 208 Feet, Yosemite
Cascades, with Indian Block House
Cliff House from the Beach, San Francisco
Cape Horn, Columbia River
Yosemite Falls 2630 ft
Section Grizzly Giant, Mariposa Grove
Young Orchard, Palermo, Butte County
Cape Horn near Celilo
The Ferryboat Solano
Malakoff Diggings, North Bloomfield, Nevada County, California
Oso House
Giant Redwood, Santa Cruz
Mechanics' Institute Exhibition, San Francisco, California
The Cliff House, San Francisco
View on Lake Tahoe
The Domes from Moran Point
There is a debate about Carleton Watkins’s middle names. According to some sources, it is said to be Eugene when the others insist it to be Emmons.
Physical Characteristics: Carleton Watkins had the problems with eyesight which restricted his ability to work since the middle of the 1890s.
Carleton Watkins married a woman named Frances Sneed in 1879. The family produced two children, Julia and Collis.
