Anonymous American Photographer

half-plate daguerreotype, sealed, cased, circa 1853

Acquired from Joseph Buberger, New Haven

Oakland Museum of California, Silver & Gold: Cased Images of the California Gold Rush, January - July 1998, and traveling thereafter to:

Washington, D. C., National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, October 1998 - March 1999

Sacramento, Crocker Art Gallery, August - October 1999

Stanley B. Burns, Mirror Mirror: The Burns Collection Daguerreotypes (New York: The Burns Archive Press, 2012), pl. 61

Stanley B. Burns, Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America (Altadena, 1990), pl. 24

Drew Heath Johnson and Marcia Eymann, eds., Silver & Gold: Cased Images of the California Gold Rush (University of Iowa Press for the Oakland Museum of California, 1998), pl. 32

A high level of detail is visible throughout this well-composed outdoor study, most notably in the legible inscription on the grave marker and in the memorial graveside fences. The two standing figures are carefully arranged and convey touching emotion. The plate is in generally very good condition. There is a thin border of tarnish along the right edge. Upon close inspection, there are tiny scattered speckles primarily near the edges as well as a rust-colored spot in the left portion of the image. The slight fogging appears to be on the underside of the glass and not on the plate itself. This plate has an old, deteriorating seal. There are a few small dark accretions on the mat. The leather case is decorated with architectural monument details. The case is intact but slightly worn. It is splitting along the right edge near the hinge.
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The mass migration to California of hungry fortune seekers at the height of the Gold Rush caused a catastrophic mortality rate from malnutrition, typhus, cholera, murder, and suicide.  A contemporary account noted ‘Suicides caused by disappointment are as numerous as the deaths resulting from natural causes’ (quoted in Silver & Gold, p. 203).  Graveside daguerreotypes offered often distant family last mementos of their loved ones.  In the affecting half-plate daguerreotype offered here, the grave marker clearly reads ‘Sacred to the memory of Solomon Harthorn / late of Milford M. E. / He died Sept. 26, 1852 / Age 42 yrs.’ 

The Harthorn family were early settlers in Maine, noted in the first United States census in 1790.  Solomon Harthorn married Julia Field in 1845 and they had at least one child, Albert, prior to moving West.  Albert’s death certificate notes his father’s occupation as ‘laborer.’