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J.J. Reilly Photographer — Views of American Scenery

By Paul Hickman and Peter Palmquist

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[The following OCR text is included to allow indexing of this page.] IN THIS ISSUE J.J. Reilly - Part 3 Views of American Scenery by Paul Hickman and Peter Palmquist COVER: Young America. San Francisco, Cal. by I. I. Reilly. From the feature in this issue, Reilly, Photographer: Views of American Scenery-Part III This is the third in our series of four articles on the life and work of photographer I. I. Reilly, covering his later years in San Francisco and Marysville. Part Two covered his years at Yosemite and appeared in the Jan./Feb. 1985 issue. Part One covered his time at Niagara and his move to Yosemite and appeared in the Nov./Dec. 1984 issue. SVE9 VOL. 12, NO. 3 JUL./AUG. 1985 Board of Directors CHAIRMAN Louis H, Smaus MEMBERS Paul Wing and T.K. Treadwell Officers PRESIDENT T.K. Treadwell EDITOR, STEREO WORLD John Dennis SECRETARY John Weller TREASURER Linda S. Carter VICE-PRESIDENT FOR REGIONAL AFFAIRS Tom Rogers VICE-PRESIDENT FOR MEMBERSHIP Laurance G. Wolfe ART DIRECTOR Richard B. McClellan CONTEMPORARY STEREOSCOPY David Starkman, William Shepard and Paul Wing PUBLICATIONS Jack and Pat Wilburn STEREO WORLD is published bimonthly by the National Stereoscopic Association Inc Box 14801, Columbus Ohio 43214 USA Annual dues $20-3rd class US $27-tst class US Canada and foreign surface, $37 international air mail Al memberships are based on the publishing year 01 Stereo World, which begins in March and ends with the Jun /Feb issue of the next year All new memberships received will commence with the March/April issue of the current calendar year Write to the above address it the buck moves of the current volume are not desired Material in this publication may not be reproduced without written permission of the NSA nc MEMBER INTERNATIONAL STEREOSCOPIC UNION a I PART III VIEWS OF __ AMERICAN SCENERY No. 205--PULPIT ROCK, U.P.R.R. [Published by E. Nesemann / on a curved, orange and lavender card.] Pulpit Rock lay forty-one miles to the east of Ogden at the western entrance to Echo Canyon. Like A. 1. Russell (the first railroad photographer to visit the region), Reilly also had the ability to ar- range men and machines into harmonious relationships with the . 4 .- . 1/4. surrounding natural environment. Looking back in the opposite direction, from the mouth of the canyon toward the broad valley a - - . of the Weber River, Russell had conceived of the red con- 4 . .P* ´ %Tel I. glomerate formation as being the Sphinx of the Valley.. a - Ir.dW;1Pr.. - - 1985 by Paul Hickman and Peter Palmquist For five years-three in Nevada and two in CaliforniaMark Twain lived in the Far West and worked as a journalist. Before he sailed from San Francisco on December 15, 1866, he secured a position as the special travelling correspondent of the Daily Alta California. In New York, the merciless abuse of local art critics almost dissuaded Twain from going to see the latest painting of Albert Bierstadt, The Domes of the Yosemite. Eastern art critics of the midnineteenth century tended to judge landscape paintings of the Western cordillera against an established norm: the Catskill Mountains as painted by the Hudson River School. According to one of Bierstadts critics, the Sierra Nevada was simply not a fit subject for a painting: It may be faithful scenery, a jury of twelve men might so declare it, but we should nevertheless fall back upon abstract conceptions of nature. Another New York columnist called the entire state of California a land that hasnt any nature in it-at least any nature such as we know... Such a climate and country may be possibly a very good place to live in, but it makes very uncomfortable pictures, and we wish Mr. Bierstadt would look up a field for his talent as an artist in which he might find some proper food . Twain, on the other hand, was a Western journalist whose only norm for mountain scenery was the Sierra nn--YOUNG AMERICA. SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. [Orange and lavender card; collection of James P. Cram.) J. J. Reilly was a young Scottish emigrant in search of a new life when he arrived in California in 1856, After serving as a volunteer in the Union Army, he became a naturalized American citizen in 1866. The economic depression that still plagued the nation in the year of the centennial had not yet shaken his basic, positive attitude toward his adopted homeland. His views from the Pacific Shore were the first photographs to be received at the Philadelphia worlds fair. Ten years later, after another business slump and another broken marriage, Reillys optimistic views U Ynim America. San niico, Cal. Nevada. He had grown accustomed to the scale, topography, and climate of the Far West, and he was writing his letters for an audience in California. The Altas special correspondent decided to try his hand as an art critic on June 2, 1867. Twain was impressed by the physical size (sixteen square yards) and by the topographical accuracy of the Domes of the Yosemite, but he thought the atmospheric effects of the German-American painter were imported... from some foreign country and smuggled into a portrait of the Yosemite. To an indigenous writer like Twain, whose literary quest for a unique, American identity was marked by an almost obsessive concern with European civilization, it was not only unnecessary but improper to smuggle an alien German sky into a portrait of an unrivaled American place. Six days later, the young writer embarked on the first organized pleasure party ever assembled for a trans-atlantic voyage. It was a memorable excursion. For the first time on record, Everybody was going to Europe, and Twain was aboard the steamship Quaker City as a spokesman for these Innocents Abroad, these New Pilgrims. He became an unofficial laureate for the kind of lowbrow, middle-class, American tourist that had just begun to replace the middlebrow, upper-class variety on the grand European circuit. about the nature of art and life in America were abandoned altogether, but for the preceding fifteen years he was quite explicit about the national character of his work. He devised a total of eight different logos for his stereo cards between December 1871 and August 1886. He updated his imprint whenever he formed or dissolved a partnership and whenever he made a seasonal or permanent change of address. (A few of his unnumbered cards fail to specify any place of publication.) The photographer was forever changing his logo, but in fifteen years there was one phrase that he never changed. Every known card of the period is inscribed with the obvious yet significant fact that Reillys stereographs were Views of AMERICAN SCENERY. 0 0 5 I t No. 127-SAN FRANCISCO FROM NOB HILL. [Paste-over stereograph affixed to an orange and lavender card; probably marketed by E. Nesemann.] (Collection of Peter Palmquist. All subsequent, uncredited illustrations are from the Palm quist collection.) Half a dozen California photographers and publishersC. E. Watkins, N. M. Klein, Lawrence & Houseworth, E. I. Muybridge, and I. I. Reilly-have each provided the historian with dozens of birds eye views of architectural eclecticism in mid- An English aristocrat was forcibly struck by an idea that soon became known as photography during his third visit to classic Italy, during his honeymoon on the lovely shores of the Lake of Como.4 A generation later, the famous alpine lake was reappraised by the Altas travelling correspondent in more colloquial, Western terms: COMO? PSHAW! SEE LAKE TAHOE!5 Several months later, the New Pilgrim made another comparison between the scenery of the Old and New worlds: THE CELEBRATED Sea of Galilee is not so large a sea as Lake Tahoe by a good deal-it is just about two thirds as large., Afterwards, he explained in a footnote, 1 measure all lakes by Tahoe, partly because I am far more familiar with it than with any other, and partly because I have such a high admiration for it. To someone who had experienced the awesome scale of the American West, the scenery of the Old World was bound to seem pallid, domesticated, dwarfed. From his travel letters and his unpublished journal, Twain compiled his record of a pleasure-trip in the spring and early summer of 1868. A year later, two months after the completion of the transcontinental railroad, it was published in the East. The previous generation of upper-class Americans had made its annual summer migration at home as well as abroad. It had sailed not only across the Atlantic to Europe, but up the Hudson to Saratoga, the most exclusive American spa of the 1840s: 0 Saratoga, Saratoga-if proof demonstrative be wanted of fashions omnipotence, truly thou dost furnish some four thousand unanswerable arguments! I Saratoga was the chosen resort of the idle rich. Six years after the completion of the Hudson River Railroad 41 le Victorian San Francisco. Here, for example, Reilly has captured one aspect of the city at a time when it was dominated by Gothic tracery (foreground), Byzantine towers (Temple Emanuel), and Italianate bays (Palace Hotel). Reilly moved from Stockton (a town of 10,000) to San Francisco (a city of 150, 000) during a lull between the financial panics of September 1873 and August 1875. His three places of residence in the city were all located within five blocks of the Palace Hotel. (1851), each of the big Saratoga hotels was accommodating twelve hundred guests. The affordable, five-dollar fare from Manhattan was bringing a new class of summer visitors to the Springs. Once carloads of these coarse Yankee businessmen began to fill the resort hotels, Saratoga was no longer exclusive, therefore no longer fashionable, and it was shunned by cultivated circles of high society. The company is dreadfully mixed, lamented Henry James, in describing the dense, democratic, vulgar Saratoga of 1870. Gentlemen at Saratoga are at a premium, observed the American expatriot, far more... than at European wateringplaces. Near Saratoga, James echoed one of Ruskins positionsthe American wilderness was an unfit subject for art, because its nameless solitude lacked meaningful, historical associations: You feel around you, with irresistible force, the serene inexperience of undedicated nature-the absence of serious associations, the nearness, indeed, of the vulgar and trivial associations of the last picturesque of great watering-places.9 Ruskins basic assumption about the need for a relationship between nature and culture in art was rejected by many artists of the Hudson River School, but even those who share the English critics anthropocentric bias toward art would have taken issue with his ambivalent disciple, Henry James, when the young anglophile dismissed scenery near Saratoga, the site of an important British defeat during the American Revolution, as devoid of serious associations. The egalitarian and historical meanings of Saratoga were anything but vulgar and trivial to patriotic American artists in the Era of Manifest Destiny. Before leaving upstate New York for his new home in California, Reilly visited the famous watering place. He also photographed it, presumably with the intention of selling his views to customers of his own social class. By 1870 the most exclusive circles of high society had already begun a new migration pattern for the spring and summer months. Thousands of select Easterners were flocking to California, but it was not really the West-the newer part of the New World-that many of the gentlemen tourists sought beyond the Missouri River, writes Earl Pomeroy, in his social history of Western tourism, but rather Italy, and the older part of the Old World. Californians hoped that the building of the Pacific railroad in 1869 would bring them traffic that had moved from the East Coast resorts to Europe. The transcontinental railroad did indeed bring many Eastern and European tourists to the Pacific Coast, but many of them were nonetheless obsessed by the transatlantic standard. Metaphorical comparisons between the railroad journey and an overseas voyage became a literary convention in travel books of the late nineteenth century, and to those whose faith sustained them, California was the Italy of America... or perhaps the No. 135--PALACE HOTEL, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. [1. 1. Reilly, Marysville, Cal/ Views of American Scenery. (margins of recto, orange and lavender card). Also pirated by E. P. Best and by Miller & Best, and on anonymous imprints entitled Stereo Views and Stereoscopic Views.] The Palace was the largest and most sumptuous hotel in the world when it opened on October 14, 1875. Its monotonous, corrugated walls of bay windows sprawled to the southeast and southwest from the busy intersection at Market and New Montgomery streets. nn--MONTGOMERY ST., SAN FRANCISCO. [Reproduced from an albumen print hand-tipped into LeContes Journal of Ramblings (1875). Also pirated as a stereograph by Miller & Best.] The photographic gallery of Bradley & Rulofson can be seen on the right, on the southwest corner of Montgomery and Sacramento streets. The Palace Hotel can be glimpsed in the distance, at the foot of Telegraph Hill, It stands like a dark menace to Montgomery Street, remarked a local newspaper in November 1874, before a coat of whitewash had subdued the hotels flaming red brick face. The Palace Hotel was built by Californias leading promoter and financier, William C. Ralston. The flag hung at half mast might conceivably be marking his death by drowning on August 27, 1875. F, Palestine.- Each New Pilgrim tended to describe his own intellectual background as much as the new land he visited, and through the changing pattern of his expectations and his observations, he not only helped to write the social history of the trans-Mississippi West, but to a surprising degree, he determined it. The inaugural year of Yosemites tourist industry was 1855. The total number of visitors in the first ten years was 653; the total number of photographers was two (Charles L. Weed and Carleton E. Watkins). During the year 1864, the number of visitors to the Yo Semite Valley was 64; in 1869, the list thus far foots up 1,113. The next season will undoubtedly show a much heavier influx of tourists. By coincidence, 1864 was also the year that Pullman introduced the first modern sleeping car, the Pioneer. Five years later, after the conclusion of the 1869 tourist season, 7 r No. 115--CHINESE STORE, SACRAMENTO STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. [Orange and lavender card. Also pirated by Miller & Best.] H. H. Bancroft shows himself to be not only a chronicler but a product of his times in describing a Chinese butcher shop similar to the one at 743 Sacramento Street: The regular provision stores are met with at frequent intervals along the street, appealing to eyes and nose with squalid stalls and half putrified delicacies; disjointed pieces of meats are cast in all directions, and suspicious looking carcasses of smoked pig dangle from the hooks. Bancrofts xenophobic distaste for foreign food is sanitized and deodorized in Reillys simple, straightforward stereograph. The photographers closed, centralized composition serves as the framework for a picture of external facades. By posing his subjects, Reilly obtained a composed but stereotyped view of their subculture. it was by no means a coincidence that Pullmans latest and most luxurious car was named the Yo Semite.. The Eastern tourist in the Far West was invariably a gentleman, quips Earl Pomeroy, at least to his banker .14 Only the rich could afford to ride in one of Pullmans Yo Semite cars. The first-class, round-trip fare from New York to San Francisco was $370 in 1869, and the cost never dropped much below three hundred dollars till the rate wars of 1886-87. Most school teachers earned around two hundred dollars a year in the America of the 1870s and early 1880s. Six-week, round-trip excursions from New York to California had an average total cost of about eight hundred dollars; one-week, round-trip excursions from San Francisco to Yosemite were around $150. After the railroads, the average per-diem cost of travel in the Far West came to about two and a half times the cost of similar travel in Europe. The alternative to travelling cross-country in a Pullman car was riding in the spare, cramped quarters of a secondclass car attached to a freight train. Emigrant passage from New York to San Francisco was seventy-six dollarsl6_a more affordable, one-way fare that lay within the means of many frugal, middle-class Americans. There were 13,114 passengers who travelled by rail from the East to San Francisco, as opposed to only 7,831 who travelled from San Francisco to the East, during the first five months of 1870. The prohibitive costs of first-class travel and the physical discomforts of second-class travel made it a foregone conclusion that each one of these Eastern travellers was either very rich or very hearty. Four photographers travelled from New York to California in the springs of 1870 and 1871. J.J. Reilly and Charles Bierstadt journeyed from the most photographed place in America (Niagara) to the most photographed place in the West (Yosemite). Thomas C. Roche and Charles L. Pond came from Brooklyn and from Buffalo. Each of these photographers created a large body of work (at least a hundred stereographs) in the Yosemite region. The characteristic style of each visitor was determined in large part by his preconceptions about the West, by the nature of the cultural baggage he brought with him from the East. Unlike his fellow travellers, Reilly was an emigrant, not an excursionist. Bierstadt, Roche, and Pond toured the region for a season or two, making views of all its curious sights, then they returned home to photograph more familiar scenes in the East. Reilly lived and worked on the Pacific Coast for the rest of his life, a period of twenty-five years. The West became his home, his norm for American scenery. Like the great twentieth-century photographer, Ansel Adams, Reilly received his first impressions of Yosemites No. 142--CHINESE WOMAN AND CHILD, SAN FRAN- CISCO. CAL. [Published by E. Nesemann on a curved, orange and lavender card. Also published by Richard Behrendt as No. 557.] Occasional stereographs such as Reillys Chinese Woman and Child-or Beauties of Santa Barbara, a casual portrait of young Hispanic women by Carleton E. Watkins-serve to demonstrate that in the late 1870s a few San Francisco photographers were sometimes still able to transcend racial stereotypes and perceive ethnic beauty. - Il -I I J N(. fl No. 443--MEXICAN CACTUS. [Orange and lavender card.] Reilly had already visited a great portion of the Pacific Coast by July of 1874. He travelled as far south as Santa Barbara, where he photographed the old Spanish mission in addition to these dapper gents seated beneath a Mexican cactus. After the opening waterfalls in the month of May. The spring thaw had just reached a crescendo in the fountainheads of the high Sierra. For Adams, the first experience was so intense as to be almost painful; he returned to the Valley every year for the rest of his life. From 1916 to 1984, Ansels life was colored and modulated by the great earth-gesture of the Sierra. The preceding autobiographical statement introduces an anthology of writings by John Muir,19 who coined expressions like earth gesture and mountain sculpture in the early 1870s. Muirs friend Reilly unquestionably preceded Adams in sharing intense feelings about Yosemite and its unique sense of place. A pleasure trip to Yosemite was de rigueur for well-bred visitors from the States. Afterwards, at least one such visitor had the audacity to admit why she-and many other Eastern tourists-had really made the trip. It was prescribed by fashion as the proper-if not compulsory-thing to do. Wo betide the wandering Easterner, she warned in mock injunction, if he seek the Pacific without bringing a trip to Yo Semite back with him !20 The trip had become fashionable, but many of those who made it had little real interest in seeing the place. Thousands of excursionists travelled from the Atlantic to the Pacific in May of 1870. First by stagecoach, then on horseback, the fashionable hordes proceeded to descend upon the beloved Yosemite of John Muir: They climb sprawlingly to their saddles like overgrown frogs pulling themselves up a stream-bank through the bent sedges, ride up the valley with about as much emotion as the horses they ride upon, and comfortable when they have done it all, and long for the ri\ z 27 2 (. 1 of its first resort hotel in 1874, Santa Barbara was visited on a regular basis by a small and unpretentious circle of Eastern tourists who sought an arid climate and a quiet, relaxed atmosphere, safety and flatness of their proper homes... The tide of visitors will float slowly about the bottom of the valley as a harmless scum, collecting in hotel and saloon eddies, leaving the rocks and falls eloquent as ever and instinct with imperishable beauty and greatness. And recollect that the top of the valley is more than half way to real heaven, and the Lord has many mansions away in the Sierra equal in power and glory to Yosemite .21 The following summer, Muir and Reilly were standing a mile above the floor of the Valley, revelling in the mountain gloom and mountain glory of Cathedral Pass and Cathedral Peak. Four years later, Muir wrote another letter from the Valley: THE SUMMER FLOOD OF TOURISTS As soon as the winter snow melts, an ungovernable avalanche of tourists comes pouring pell mell into Yosemite, flooding the hotels, and chafing and grinding against one another like rough-angled bowlders in a pothole.22 Reilly lived and worked in Yosemite Valley for seven summers (1870-76). In these years, he had some satisfying, mountaintop experiences with Muir, but neither photographer nor guide was really free to leave the Valley for any length of time during the peak months of the tourist season. The financial success of Reillys photographic business depended on the patronage of a heavy, seasonal influx of tourists. He sold these tourists his hard-earned views of alpine scenery, and he made countless portraits of them No. 442--DEVILS PUNCH BOWL, GEYSER SPRINGS, CAL. [Pas te-over stereograph affixed to an orange and lavender card; probably marketed by F. Nesemann.j From San Francisco, reaching the Geysers required a twelvehour trip by boat, rail, and stage. From 1865 to 1874, the volcanic region beyond Sonoma attracted many visitors who were unwilling to make the longer, more arduous trip to Yosemite. The hot springs and fumaroles of the region emitted strange vapors, which promoter and publicists delighted in calling infernal. From Thos. Houseworth & Co. or Bradley & Rulofson a tourist might purchase stereo views of the Devils Canyon, Laboratory, Office, Pulpit, Tea Kettle, or Washtub; Pluton Creek or River; Vulcans Steam Works; the Witch of the Geysers or the Witches Caldron. One of these eerie scenes was described by Benjamin P. Avery, a journalist and art critic of the period. The Witches Caldron was filled with a thick inky liquid, boiling hot, that tumbles and roars in front of Yosemite Falls. These stereographs fulfilled a social need that subsequent generations have satisfied by sending postcards and showing slides to friends at home. Each kind of picture has in turn seemed to say, We did it all in Yosemite Valley. From 1870 to 1872, Reilly was forced to share the tourist trade with Yosemites other resident photographer, M.M. Hazeltine. After Hazeltine returned to Yosemite in 1876, rather than fight over a limited supply of customers, the former rivals made the only sensible business decision. They joined forces and formed a monopoly. After Reilly left the Valley, Hazeltine continued to do a good business in the taking and selling of landscape photographs and groups (with the Yosemite Falls as the background). S.C. Walker and Gustavus Fagersteen succeeded Reilly and Hazeltine as proprietors of the local photographic concession. Business continued to follow the old, established patterns. Old views were marketed on new cards; new groups of tourists were photographed near the site of the old Stereoscopic View Manufactory. under the pressure of escaping steam, emitting a smell like that of bilge-water, and seems to proceed from some Plutonic reservoir. One irresistably thinks of the hell-broth in Macbeth, so thick and slab, and repeats the words of the weird sisters: Double, double, toil, and trouble, Fire burn and caldron bubble. A clever photographer, Mr. Muybridge, conceived the idea of grouping three lady visitors about this caldron, with hands linked, and alpenstocks held like magic wands, in which position he photographed them amid the vaporous scene with telling effect. (Avery was irresistably led to think of Shakespeares play by Muybridges narrative subtitles for these two stereo graphs: Macbeth, Act 4, Scenes 1-2.) Elsewhere, Muybridge etched Satan himself into a stereo negative of the Devils Tea Kettle. Reillys view of the Devils Punch Bowl is not so cleveras some of Muybridges more telling effects, nor has he populated his infernal scene with a large tourist group-a standard marketing practice in the smaller views of Watkins, Houseworth, and Bradley & Rulofson. One of these artists has set his skylight kennel in front of the Yo Semite Fall, and blazons in big letters: Photographs taken with the Yo Semite in the background! Think of the impudence of the thing! Offering to throw in twenty-six hundred feet of cataract; pairing off your little dot of a face and figure with a half mile tumbling glory, and selling cascade and tourist for eight dollars a dozen.24. Ten years earlier, Twain was more enraged than even the preceding observer when a souvenir hunter from his ship had attempted to chip a specimen from the face of the Sphinx. The American writer was truly awed by the historical associations of the ancient monument: Egyptian granite that has defied the storms and earthquakes of all time has nothing to fear from the tackhammers of ignorant excursionists .25 Likewise, the granite walls of the Yosemite were not only unscathed, but untouched, by most of Reillys customers. Twains travelling companions sought to 10 IHL - 1. No. 252--NATURAL BRIDGE, FARRALLONE [sic] ISLANDS. PACIFIC OCEAN, CAL. [Orange and lavender card.] The Farallons were a small group of islands about thirty-five miles beyond the Golden Gate. South Farallon Island was a natural habitat for sea lions, jackrabbits, and murres. A covey of these birds can be seen perched atop Murre Bridge in Reillys view. From 1876 to 1886 all of Reillys stereographs were trimmed in a deface the wonders of the ancient world for the sake of a souvenir. Excursionists who visited the natural wonders of the New World tended to be richer, better educated, more fashionable, and less destructive. Most of Yosemites early tourists were content to survey its cliffs, falls and domes for a short time and from a safe distance. At worst, taking souvenir portraits of these people as the foreground of the Great Fall S26 was a harmless enterprise. The resulting mementos seem to have satisfied the social requirements of a generation of tourists. These tangible proofs of a visit may also have sublimated the baser instincts of a few of Yosemites visitors. More innocents of Twains generation might have sampled the parks forbidden fruits-more ignorant excursionists might have left behind more than footprints, taken away more than photographs-were it not for the concessions of Reilly, Hazeltine, Walker, Fagersteen, Fiske, and subsequent rivals. Taking portraits of the rich, the famous, and the innocent was a lucrative, seasonal business for Yosemites early photographers. The resulting stereographs were intended as social documents, and never for a moment as works of art. Reilly was a businessman of the Reconstruction, not a naive limner of the early Colonial period. Earning a living plays a necessary, supporting role in the making of art, and in the cases of Reilly, Hazeltine, and Adams, to name only the proprietors of Yosemites first and last photographic concessions, a picture gallery in the Valley has served as a financial and logistical base of operations for successful artistic campaigns into the surrounding high country. new Bergner cutter. The resulting prints were larger and had an Adamesque arch of squatter proportions. Much of the picturesque beauty of Natural Bridge is attributable to the size and shape of the new dies and to the positioning of the uncropped prints in the cutter. The variety and irregularity of the serrated line at the top of the picture was much enhanced by the decision to place it in such close proximity to the low, squat arch of the picture frame. FOOTNOTES National Academy of Design, New York Evening Post, 10 May 1871. Fine Arts: National Academy of Design-Fiftieth Annual Exhibition, New York Daily Tribune, 1 May 1875. Mark Twain, The Domes of the Yosemite, San Francisco Daily Alta California, 4 August 1867, P. 1, col. 5. 4H. Fox Talbot, The Pencil of Nature (London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1844), Brief Historical Sketch of the Invention of the Art, n. pag. Mark Twain, Lake of Como, July, 1867, San Francisco Daily Alto California, 22 September 1867. Mark Twain, Capernaum, September, 1867 San Francisco Daily Alta California, 19 January 1868. Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens), The Innocents Abroad, or, the New Pilgrims Progress (Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1869), p. 507. George Templeton Strong, The Diary of George Templeton Strong, edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas (New York: Mac- millan, 1952), vol. 1, p. 186, quoted by Hans Huth, Nature and the American: Three Centuries of Changing Attitudes (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, Bison Book, 1972), p. 107. [Henry James], Saratoga, Nation 11 (11 August 1870):87-89. No. 415-CONGRESS & COLUMB. SPRING SARATOGA By J.J. Reilly SUSP. BRIDGE N.Y. (bottom of recto), collection of Ward F. Ryan. Earl Pomeroy, In Search of the Golden West: The Tourist in Western America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957), p. 32. Increase of Travel, Mariposa Weekly Gazette, 26 November, 1869, p. 2, col. 1. A Sleeping Car-The Yo Semite, Mariposa Weekly Gazette, 24 December 1869, p. 4, col. 1. Pomeroy, In Search of the Golden West, p. 7. Rates of Pacific Railroad Fare, Mariposa Weekly Gazette, 14 May 1869, p. 2, col. 1. The Pacific Roads, Mariposa Weekly Gazette, 5 November 1869, p. 2, col. 1. 11 Passenger Traffic, Mariposa Weekly Gazette, 24 June 1870, p. 2, col. 1. For a brief discussion of these styles and preconceptions, see Paul Hickman, Art, Information, and Evidence: Early Landscape Photographs of the Yosemite Region, Exposure 22 (Spring 1984): 26-27. l9Ansel Adams, Introduction to Yosemite and the High Sierra, by John Muir, edited by Charlotte Mauk (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1948), p. xiv. 20Olive Logan, Does It Pay to Visit Yo Semite? Galaxy 10 (October 1870): 498. John Muir to Jeanne Carr, 29 May 1870, printed in John Muir, Let- ters to a Friend, Written to Mr. Ezra S. Carr, 1866-1879 (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1915), pp. 81-82. John Muir to San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, 14 June 1875, reprinted in John Muir, John Muir Summering in the Sierra, edited by Robert Engberg (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), p. 68. Hermann W. Vogel, Vom indischen Ocean bis zum Goldiande (Berlin: Verlag von Theobald Grieben, 1877), p. 447. 4Benjamin F. Taylor, Between the Gates (Chicago: S.C. Griggs & Company, 1878), p. 217. Twain, The Innocents Abroad, p. 630. 6C. F. Gordon Cumming, Granite Crags of California (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood & Sons, 1886), p. 129 (8 May 1878). For a survey of Fiske and his later rivals, see Paul Addison Hickman, The Life and Photographic Works of George Fiske, 1835-1918, M.A. thesis, Arizona State University, 1979, pp. 43-45. nn--MAIN MAST ROCK, FARRALON ISLANDS, PACIFIC OCEAN. [1. 1. Reilly, P. 0. Box 420, San Francisco, Cal. (verso, orange and lavender card). Also pirated under an imprint entitled Stereo Views. I Natural Bridge and Main Mast Rock were photographed by Watkins with his mammoth-plate camera in the late 1860s and by Reilly with his binocular camera in the late 1870s. Reilly carried a pair of Wide-Angle Rectilinear lenses, with wider angles of coverage than a Globe lens, so he could have obtained results similar to those of Watkins, but both times he made the intuitive decision to use his other, standard focal-length tubes. Little decisions like selecting the proper lens or choosing the appropriate print size and format were all part of the mechanical process by which the view photographer might hope to define a characteristic, artistic style. The Reilly Chronology PART III: SAN FRANCISCO AND MARYSVILLE 1875-79: Reilly published unnumbered views of the following places on his San Francisco imprints: Yosemite Valley and the Big Trees of Calaveras and Mariposa Groves; Sierra Nevada Mountains; Central Pacific Railroad and Union Pacific Railroad; Geyser Springs; San Francisco; Santa Barbara; Stockton; Sacramento; Salt Lake [City] and Niagara Falls; also, the Farralon Islands, in the Pacific Ocean, 30 miles distant from San Francisco ... J. J. Reilly, P.O. Box 1790, San Francisco, Cal. Reilly first published his views of the Farralons after changing his P.O. box from number 420 to number 1790. He sold his views wholesale to booksellers and news vendors; his largest local distributor was Chilion Beach. The photographer also accepted assignments for a variety of outdoor work: homes, animals, graveyards, and tombstones. [Verso of unnumbered cabinet and stereo cards, collections of the Nevada Historical Society, Peter Palmquist, and Louis H. Smaus.] 1877: By the end of the year, Reilly had traveled to Utah and photographed the Ogden train depot. [MS, verso, unnumbered stereograph, collection of the Sacramento Railroad Museum.] Boarding an eastbound train of the Union Pacific, he continued his photographic excursion. Later, he published a small group of stereographs of Colorado scenery. Reillys cards were being marketed by Amos Woods, of Marysville, California. [Logo, verso, unnumbered stereograph, collection of Peter Palmquist.] Two years later, Reilly succeeded Woods as the proprietor of the Marysville gallery. 1878: By February the photographer had moved from 729 California Street to 526 Pine Street. [Langleys San Francisco Directory, p. 713.] By July, Reilly had left San Francisco and moved to Marysville, where he proceeded to establish himself as a portrait and landscape photographer. For the remainder of the year, he ran a seven-stanza advertisement in one of the local papers. He touted his many years of experience in posing sitters, his chiaroscuro lighting effects (the so-called Rembrandt effect), the latest style (bust portraits in three-quarter profile), correct exposures with shadow detail, great skill in retouching eyes and in hand-tinting lips and cheeks, and a picture that never fades... Fine work is done in Woods Photo Gallery, Odd Fellows Bldg. Marysville by 1. J. Reilly, inventor of the new/ magic process for making the babys pictures in from one t two seconds. [At Woods Photo Gallery, Marysville Dai- ly Appeal. Reilly had already succeeded Amos Woods as proprietor, but he retained the gallery name, which local residents had associated with the business since 1860.] 1879-86: Reilly operated the gallery for the next seven years. It was situated on the top floor of a three-story building that still stands on the northeast corner of Third and D streets in downtown Marysville. [History of Yuba County, California (1879), p. 142; Yuba County Census (1880), p. 414, information courtesy of James Abajian; 12 No. 215--EASTERN-BOUND TEA TRAIN, C.P.R.R., CAL. [Paste-over stereograph affixed to an orange and lavender card; probably marketed by E. Nesemann. Also pirated on a Diamond H card.] Blue Canyon lay along the right-of-way of the Central Pacific Railroad, 216 miles to the east of San Francisco, on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. In creating a sense of the rapid motion of rolling stock, Reillys views were often more successful McKenneys City and County Directory of Yuba, S utter, Co/usa, Butte and Tehama Counties (1881), p. 105; McKenneys Business Directory of the Principal Towns of California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska (1882), pp. 322, 589; Healds Business College Directory (1882); McKenneys Pacific Coast Directory for 1883-84, p. 664; McKenneys County Directory of Yuba, Sutter, Co/usa, Butte, and Tehama Counties (1884-85), p. 200; McKenneys Pacific Coast Directory for 1886-7, p. 566.] Reilly photographed one hundred and eleven surviving members of the Marysville Society of California Pioneers in his studio. He combined his vignetted bust portrait of each forty-niner into a single, mammoth-sized, photomontage. [Collections of the California State Library and Peter Palmquist.] On a lower note, he was also paid at regular intervals, by the city of Marysville, for taking mug shots of local prisoners. [City council minutes, July 1879-August 1886, John Packard Library of Yuba County.] After he had reestablished himself as a portrait photographer, Reilly resumed his former practice of numbering his stereo views. He devised new numbers for his better early work, and he assigned numbers for the first time to many of his later negatives. 1880-83: Employed a Chinese assistant named Sooy. [Information courtesy of Paul T. Shafer.] 1880-84: Sometime in the early 1880s, Reilly visited the Monterey peninsula. He photographed the Hotel del Monte and the Mission San Carlos. [The resort had opened on June 3, 1880; the church was restored in 1884.] 4 than those of the Central Pacifics own photographer, Alfred A. Hart, but in portraying the billowing smoke of steam engines, Reillys unmanipulated wet-plate views of the 1870s were often surpassed in the following decade by the retouched dry-plate views of a Colorado railroad photographer, William H. Jackson. Yet Jacksons pictures, like Harts, still tend to lack a sense of movement, a sense that Reilly was sometimes able to engender by means of the arcs and diagonals of his open, baroque compositions. PALISADE CITY, C.P.R.R., CAL. [sic. Orange and lavender card. Also published by Reilly in his new series as No. 221.] 572 miles to the east of San Francisco, the tracks of the C. P.R. R, passed through Palisade City; the small Nevada town was situated on the Humboldt River at the western entrance to TenMile Canyon. 13 I dustry and Agriculture, Louisville, August 1885; 3) the North, Central and South American Exposition, New Orleans, November 10, 1885-April 1, 1886. [Charles B. Turrill, Catalogue of the Products of California (New Orleans, 1886), pp. 3, 93.] Yosemites most influential publicist acknowledged Reillys contribution in advancing its renown. {J. M. Hutchings, In the Heart of the Sierras (1886), P. 131.1 1885: December: Every person having pictures taken at the Woods Gallery during the month of December will be presented with a ticket which will entitle the holder to a chance in a fine large picture of him or herself ... J. J. Reilly, photographer. [Marysville Daily Appeal.] 1886: August 15: Reilly abandoned his second wife and his lifes work in Marysville. His master set of stereo negatives-a body of work twenty years in the makingwas acquired by Enno Nesemann, the proprietor at Woods Gallery for the next fourteen years. Like his predecessors in the small, country town, Nesemann earned a living by taking dogtypes and mug shots, and by marketing views to a regional audience. OGDEN DEPOT, UTAH, LOOKING EAST. [Orange and lavender card, presented by one lady to another in 1877; collection of the Sacramento Railroad Museum.] Lying 882 miles to the east of San Francisco on the Central Pacific, 1032 to the west of Omaha on the Union Pacific, and forty to the north of Salt Lake City on the Utah Central, the main Ogden depot was a major transfer point for travel by rail. To the east, the monotonous scenery of the Great Basin was relieved by the faint outline of the Wasatch Range. His views of the trestles and tunnels of the Santa Cruz narrow-gauge railway may date from the same excursion. [The narrow-gauge line from Santa Cruz to Watsonville was completed in 1876. Three years later a branch line was laid to the California Powder Works. The munitions plant is also the subject of a Reilly stereograph.] 1881: February: Boarding at the Western House, on the corner of Second and D streets, in Marysville. [City and County Directory of Yuba, Sutter, Colusa, Butte, and Tehama Counties, pp. 105, 118.] March 1: At the age of forty-two, Reilly was married in Sacramento to his second wife, Jennie. 1883-84: Awarded the First Premium at the last Fair for 1883, For the BEST PHOTOGRAPHS Pictures copied and enlarged to life size, in Water Color, India Ink or Oil Painting. [Verso, carte-de-visite and cabinetcard portraits, collection of Peter Palmquist.] 1884: January: John and Jennie Reilly were residing at the corner of Eighth and D streets in Marysville. A block from Johns place of business, Jennie was working as the proprietress of Bon Ton Millinery Store/Dealer in French Flowers, Feathers, /Ornaments, Laces, Etc. /Also an Excellent Stock of Hair Goods. [County Directory of Yuba, Sutter, Colusa, Butte, and Teharna Counties, pp. 200, 220.1 1884-86: Reillys Yosemite views were displayed by the Southern Pacific Company at a succession of national and international exhibitions: 1) the Worlds Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, New Orleans, December 16, 1884-June 1, 1885; 2) the Southern Exposition of Art, In- 14 . . T - nn--DEVILS SLIDE, U.P.R.R. [Orange and lavender card published by Reilly in his new series as No. 184.] Round a curve and across a bridge from the 1000 Mile Tree, writes Alfred A. Hart, we behold across the river The Devils Slide, a curious formation, formed by two paralleled perpendicular strata of granite, which, cropping out from the side of the mountain, extend from the river at its base to the summit at about thirty feet apart, and from thirty to eighty feet high. The photographer wrote the preceding descriptive passage for The Travelers Own Book: A Souvenir of Overland Travel (1870). To meet the demand for mementos of such a curious formation, The Devils Slide was photographed by A. I. Russell, A. A. Hart, W. H. Jackson, C. R. Savage, C. E. Watkins, E. I. Muybridge, and 1. 1. Reilly. Every known view by each of Reillys predecessors provides at least one point of reference, either the far shore of the river or the top of the steep canyon wall. Rather than add yet another descriptive, topographical view to the list, Reilly chose to portray the long shadows he saw casted by these cross-lit granite outcrops in the waning hours of the afternoon. 1887: June 15: As a veteran of the U. S. Army, Reilly filed a successful reapplication for a disability pension. He was residing in San Francisco, where he could be addressed care of Oscar Foss, a photographic stock dealer at 841 Mission Street. 1889: May 24: Divorce papers were filed in Marysville by Reillys wife. [Jennie Reilly v. John James Reilly, suit no. 989, Superior Court of Yuba County, bk. 38, p. 380.1 June 17: Served summons to appear in divorce proceedings. July 20: Failed to appear at the prescribed time in the Superior Court of Yuba County. The judge therefore awarded his wife all the property already in her name. [Judgement no. 337, bk. 7, p. 785.1 Two years later, his exwife was remarried to the local baker, Joseph Meyers. For another six years, however, she continued to run her millinery shop as Mrs. J. Reilly. Seven years after retiring from business, she died in Redlands, California. 1890: May: Reilly was listed as an artist who resided at 313 Stockton Street. [Langleys San Francisco Directory, p. 1108.] 1891: On the 4th of March, he wrote a letter of inquiry to C. W. J. Johnson, a portrait photographer in Monterey: Have you found a man yet to run your gallery for the summer? If not, I think I would try it, provided the place would pay anything above living expenses. I have been in the business for 25 years, but always for myself till lately. I am No. 450-NATURAL MONUMENTS, IN MONUMENT PARK, COL. [Orange and lavender card,] Midway between Ogden and Omaha, Reilly has boarded a southbound train of the Denver Pacific at Cheyenne, Wyoming. From Denver, he travelled as far west as the mining district of Georgetown, and as far south as the natural monuments of the Garden of the Gods. In 1871 the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad had transformed a provincial Colorado town into a fashionable watering place for steady, sober man, which you can find by enquiring of Foss or his bookkeeper Shilcock, as the two of them have known me about 20 years. Give me an idea of the amount of business done in the gallery and the prices you get for cab[inet cards]. Once again, Reilly gave the business address of Foss as his mailing address. [C. W. J. Johnson file, California State Library.] 1893: February 13: The New York Photograph Gallery was open for business on the top floor of the Vance Block in Eureka, California. The photographer in charge was J. J. Reilly, a man of many years experience. His partner was a man named Evans. The itinerant photographers remained in town for three months. [Humboldt Standard.] 1894: January: One of Reillys views of Eureka was reproduced in a professional trade journal. It was described by the editor as a fine architectural view, as an exemplary bit of work done by an expert. [St. Louis and Canadian Photographer, vol. 18, pp. 44, 50.] Sunday, June 24: Reilly was boarding at the Pioneer House, on the corner of Fourth and Mission streets, in San Francisco. He had already exhausted his disability pension. He was out of work and running out of money. Infirmed and despondent, he wrote the following suicide note, which he addressed to Coroner Hughes and to anyone else it might concern: This is to certify that I, J. J. Reilly, am tired of this life and so close up my accounts with all humanity on this earth. its Eastern and English excursionists. According to the author of an 1873 guidebook to Colorado Springs, any significant historical monument to be found anywhere in the Old World invariably had its natural, New World counterpart somewhere within the Garden of the Gods. The visitor to Monument Park might pass under the shadow of China great wall, muse among Palm yras shattered and fallen columns, stand face to face with the mysterious Sphynx of Egypt, gaze upon the Temples of Greece, or the Castles of England and Germany, or the old Abbeys which pious monks upreared. 15 J. J. Reilly was proprietor of the local Marysville photo gallery from 1879 to 1886; Jennie Reilly was proprietress of the local millinery shop from 1884 to 1897. She made the transition from My reasons for doing so are: First, I am 55 years old: I have been disabled in the War of the Rebellion. Second, I am out of money and can find no work, so life to me is not worth living for. What are the few days, weeks, months or years which might be ahead of me? I am no good to any one, neither to myself, and why should I allow myself to suffer and go hungry? No, I will never do it. And as I see the country is in a very bad condition, and the Government is rotten, and it is only bloodshed that will purify it. I request that my trunk and its contents be delivered to Oscar Foss, at 841 Mission street, who I know will forward it to my son, as I have directed him to do. I also request that my body be given to the Dr. Toland Medical College, as I am afflicted with liver and other troubles, which may be of use to the medical men. As I claim man should know and should be allowed to be his own judge as to what is best for himself, I claim this privilege. So good-by to all my acquaintances. [Did Not Care to Live: The Reasons Given by J. J. Reilly for Attempting Suicide, San Francisco Examiner, June 29, P. 6 col. 6; No Hope in Life: J. J. Reilly Prefers Death by the Gas Route, San Franciso Morning Call, June 29, p. 12, col. 6.1 Wednesday, June 27: Returning to the Pioneer House in the evening, Reilly stopped at the front desk to settle his account. After writing a letter to Oscar Foss, and setting aside five dollars that belonged to his old friend, he added a postscript to his suicide note: My business is all settled, and I am in my right mind as much as I ever was. I am no drunkard, and know what I am doing. The old photographer then locked his door, and shut the window. Extinguishing his lamp, he turned the gas on full, and went to bed to die. John and Jennie Reilly lived together in apparent happiness for five years, from 1881 to 1886. Reilly was divorced from his second, estranged wife three years later in 1889. Thursday, June 28: The next afternoon, a chambermaid detected a strong smell of gas coming from his room. When the door was burst open he was found in bed unconcious. He was rushed to the hospital in a patrol wagon. His suicide note and a sealed envelope for Foss were found on his bedside table. Friday, June 29: Hovering between life and death at the Receiving Hospital. Saturday, June 30: The following evening, Reilly died from the effects of carbon monoxide asphyxiation, and his body was removed to the Morgue. [His End Accomplished: J. J. Reilly Dies from the Effects of Coal Gas, San Francisco Chronicle, July 1, p. 24, col. 6; J. J. Reilly Succumbs, San Franciso Morning Call, July 1, p. 8, col. 7; San Francisco Examiner, July 1, p. 12, col. 2.1 Monday, July 2: At two in the afternoon, a funeral service was held for the late photographer in the parlors of Martin & Morrison, at 118 Geary Street. [San Francisco Examiner and Morning Call, each onp. 8, col. 7]. Afterwards, his body was given to a local medical college, in accordance with his instruction. Reilly was survived by two ex-wives and by a son from his first marriage. A trunk filled with personal effects was shipped to the son. Some scattered remnants of his abandoned body of work are the photographic legacy that he left behind for the rest of us. He had succeeded in ending his life, but he was unable to erase his lifes passage. In the final analysis, he was unquestionably a failure in business and in marriage, but his works were often an artistic success. The Fourth of July closes the Midwinter Fair-it will be Independence Day, San Francisco Day, and Closing Day all in one. Patriotism, sectionalism, and city pride will forri a 16 nn--MR. AND MRS. J. I. R. [Orange and lavender card; collec- housewife to businesswoman in the first year of an economic tion of James P. Cram.] recession. .EI nn--[STUDIO PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG GIRL. WOODS/ PHOTOGRAPH GALLERY,/Odd Fellows Building, /MARYSVILLE, CAL. (verso, off-white cabinetcard). I Upon his arrival in Marysville, Reilly began describing himself as the inventor and patent applicant for the new magic process for making the babys pictures in from one to two seconds. On the backs of these cabinet-card and carte-de-visite portraits, Reilly announced that his gallery had once again captured the first premium for the best photographs at the 1883 fair (presumably the state or county fair). nn--MEMBERS OF THE MARYSVILLE SOCIETY OF CALIFORNIA PIONEERS, ARRIVED IN CALIFORNIA IN 1849. [PHOTOGRAPHED AT WOODS GALLERY, ODD FELLOWS BUILDING, BY I. I. REILLY. (recto). A 13 x 18 photomontage on a 191/2 x24 off-white mount.] North of Sacramento at the head of steamboat navigation on the Yuba River, Marysville was situated in proximity to the rich mining districts of the Feather and Yuba rivers. By the end of the first year of the California Gold Rush, the small river town was boasting a resident population of five hundred and a floating population of another thousand. Thirty years later, a small but proud fraction of these Marysville forty-niners were photographed by Reilly in his studio. trinity of motives that will make the day one that will be long remembered in State annals. The San Francisco fair was a detriment to the city during the hard times, and it was overshadowed by its obvious prototype, the Chicago worlds fair, but in retrospect it was regarded as a partial success: it has startled the world into a realization of the fact that the land of the sluice-box and the rocker has become the land of the plow and the pruning-hook. [Overland Monthly, 2d series, vol. 24, July 1894, p. 107.] Almost a full year before Reillys death, a brilliant and influential young professor from a large Midwestern university had already given birth to the frontier school of American historiography. The 1893 convention of the American Historical Association was held in Chicago in conjunction with the Worlds Columbian Exposition. Prof. Turner read his essay on The Significance of the Frontier in American History before the July 12th session: The frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history ... In the crucible of the frontier the immigrants were Americanized, liberated, and fused into a mixed race, English in neither nationality nor characteristics. The process had gone on froth the early days to our own ... Moving westward, the frontier became more and more American. As successive terminal moraines result from successive glaciation, so each frontier leaves its traces behind it, and when it becomes a settled area the region still partakes of the frontier characteristics. Thus the advance of the frontier has meant a steady movement away from the influence of Europe, a steady growth of independence on American lines. And to study this advance, the men who grew up under these conditions, and the political, economic, and social results of it, is to study the really American part of our history. [Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1962), pp. 4, 23, 38.] And to study the works of men like Reilly and Twain is to study the truly American part of our art and literature. 18 A CHECKLIST OF STEREO VIEWS BY J.J. REILLY Part II: New Series The second checklist is a preliminary compilation of the new series views. These numbers and titles were devised by Reilly after he had established himself as a portrait photographer in Marysville, California. Negatives of different subjects were subsumed under a common number, but designated by separate titles, in at least three instances. Variant negatives are known to be designated by the same number and title in three additional instances. The new series views are crossreferenced, insofar as possible, to Reillys old series numbers, to other photographers and firms that published his views from duplicate or copy negatives, and to various wholesale and pirated imprints. Whenever numbers were assigned to these views, the numerical designation is listed after the name of the maker or the name of the anonymous imprint. Enno Nesemann acquired Reillys master set of stereo negatives, and he probably also acquired an inventory of leftover Reilly cards. At first, Nesemann retained Reillys new series number and title for each view, but he reset the information into a letterpress caption inserted beneath the left image of each negative. (Reillys captions were electrotyped onto his Marysville cards beneath the right image.) Since Reillys paste-over stereographs are invariably labeled i9the typographical style of Nesemann, the vast majority of these hybrid views are presumably the product of Nesemanns early, transitional period as a stereo publisher in Marysville. (At least one example, however, seems to date from a much later period in his publishing career.) At a later date, Nesemann renumbered a few of his Reilly negatives. He also updated and expanded his inventory of stereo views. For example, he published a stereograph of San Franciscos second Cliff House (1896-1907) under a number that Reilly had assigned to an outdated negative of the first Cliff House. From his provincial headquarters in Marysville, by 1890 Nesemann had become involved in producing comic scenes for the international audience of the Universal Stereoscopic View Company. The ambitious, small-town photographer also acquired several lines of European views, and several others of subjects nearer to home. A Nesemann stereograph of a San Francisco skyscraper was assigned the number 887; another of Mount Rainer was assigned his highest known designation, the number 915. the second example is a paste-over stereograph affixed to a curved Reilly card. To the best of our knowledge, Reilly never traveled up the Pacific Coast beyond Eureka, he never devised a new series number higher than 479, and he never marketed his work on curved stock. We can No. 403--MARYSVILLE LOOKING WEST, CAL. [Orange and first came to the land of El Dorado in 1856, but by the time he had lavender card; collection of John W. Weiler. I become the towns portrait and landscape photographer in 1879, Marysville was the third largest town in California when Reilly its population had dropped from 8,000 to 4,300. 1 . No. 458--SANTA CRUZ NARROW GUAGE [sic] R. R. BRIDGE, CAL. [Orange and lavender card; collection of Louis H. Smaus.] By 1880 the tracks of two railroads had brought the northern end of Monterey Bay within three hours of San Francisco-and for only surmise that Nesemann had modernized his remaining supply of oldfashioned Reilly cards by the turn of the century. If each of the preceding assumptions is correct, then Nesemann was responsible for marketing a huge, abandoned stockpile of Reillys cards, and Reilly was responsible for taking a little more than half of Nesemanns final inventory of negatives. Both the chronology and the checklists are works in progress, and each remains regrettably incomplete. We wish to acknowledge the assistance of Louis H. Smaus, who has made major contributions to both of the checklists. Can you, from your collection, provide us with any additional information? Any numbers and titles? Any cross-listings? Please direct information about views of the Yosemite, the Big Trees, the High Sierra, and Mono Lake to Paul Hickman at 945 Buena Vista Drive SE, Apt. H-204, Albuquerque, NM 87106. Information about views of all other subjects should be addressed to Peter Palmquist at 1183 Union Street, Arcata, CA 95521. We shall conclude our series of articles on Reilly in the next issue of Stereo World. For a subsequent issue, we plan to compile a list of additions and corrections to the series, and we hope to be able to acknowledge your contributions. NEW SERIES VIEWS- 100-STATE CAPITOL, SACRAMENTO, CAL. 101-GRAND COURT, PALACE HOTEL, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 102-CHINESE STEAMER IN THE BAY OF SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 103-SAN FRANCISCO LOOKING SOUTH, FROM NOB HILL. 104-RESIDENCE OF C. CROCKER, NOB HILL, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 105-SHIPPING IN THE BAY OF SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. FE. Nesemann, No. 105.] 106-LOTTAS FOUNTAIN, SAN FRANCISCO. 107-RESIDENCE OF MARK HOPKINS, NOB HILL, SAN FRAN. CAL. 108 CHINESE MERCHANT AND HIS WIFE, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. [E. Nesemann, No. 108] 110-BALDWIN HOTEL, MARKET STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 111-CLAY STREET, FROM SANSOME, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 112-BANK OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO. a third of the old cost of travelling by stagecoach or steamer. The Santa Cruz Railroad Company was willing to make special, unscheduled stops to drop off campers and fishermen anywhere along its route-beneath coastal redwoods or beside mountain streams of the coastal range. 113-CALIFORNIA STREET-LOOKING DOWN HILL TOWARDS SHIPS IN BAY. 114-BALDWIN HOTEL DINING ROOM. 115-CHINESE STORE, SACRAMENTO STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. [Miller & Best; E. Nesemann, No. 1151. 116-BALDWIN HOTEL AND POWELL STREET, SAN FRANCISCO. 117-SAN FRANCISCO FROM TELEGRAPH HILL. 119-KEARNEY ST. PLAZA, SAN FRANCISCO. 120-RESIDENCE OF GOV. STANFORD, NOB HILL, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 121-MARKET STREET FROM 5TH LOOKING EAST, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 122-BIRDS-EYE VIEW OF SACRAMENTO FROM TOP OF CAPITOL, CAL. 123-GOLDEN GATE, FROM TELEGRAPH HILL, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. ]E. Nesemann, No. 123.1 125-SAFE DEPOSIT BUILDING, SAN FRANCISCO. 126-CLAY STREET HILL, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 127-SAN FRANCISCO FROM CALIFORNIA AND TAYLOR STREETS, CAL. FE. Nesemann, No. 127]. 130-CHINESE JOSS HOUSE, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. FE. Nesemann, No. 130.] 134-TOP FLOOR, PALACE HOTEL, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. FE. Nesemann, No. 134.] 135 PALACE HOTEL, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. FE. Nesemann, No. 135. Also variant negative; American Scenery /American Scenery; E. P. Best; Miller & Best; Stereo Views; Stereoscopic Views.] 137-THE BAY FROM TELEGRAPH HILL, SAN FRANCISCO. 139-CLIFF HOUSE AND SEAL ROCKS, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 141-GRANT AVENUE, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 142-CHINESE WOMAN AND CHILD, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. l Richard Behrendt, No. 557; E. Nesemann, No. 142.] 143-SEAL ROCKS, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 144-LOOKING SOUTH FROM NOB HILL. 145-CHINESE RESTAURANT, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. IE. Nesemann, No. 145.] 147-COURT OF THE PALACE HOTEL, GROUND FLOOR, SAN FRANCISCO. 19 ... , . .t, _., W . ., , . .. , , -. --, -.- 150-MONTGOMERY STREET, FROM CLAY ST., SAN FRANCISCO. 153-MOUNT TAMALPAIS, FROM SAUSELITO, SAN FRANCISCO. 154-LEIDESDORF STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 156-CACTUS ROCKERY, WOOD WARDS GARDENS, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. [E. Nesemann, No. 1561. 157-RUSTIC FOUNTAIN, WOODWARDS GARDENS, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 162-FAIRY LAKE, WOODWARDS GARDENS. 166-FERNERY, WOODWARDS GARDENS, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. [E. Nesemann, No. 166] 171-CALIFORNIA ORANGE TREE, WITH FRUIT. 173-SANTA BARBARA MISSION, CAL. 174-MEXICAN CACTUS. [E. Nesemann, No. 174]. 176-TENAYA LAKE, SIERRAS, CAL. [Diamond H; Joseph LeConte.] 178-THUNDER CLOUDS ON THE SUMMITS OF THE SIERRAS, CAL. 180-SUMMIT LAKE, C.P.R.R., CAL. 183-LAKE ANGELINE AT THE SUMMIT, C.P.R.R., CAL. 184-DEVILS SLIDE, U.P.R.R. ]E. Nesemann, No. 184.1 185-MONUMENTAL SAWMILL, C.P.R.R. 186-SALT LAKE CITY AND THE WASATCH MOUNTAINS, UTAH. [Also variant negative.] 190-HUMBOLDT HOUSE, C.P.R.R. 191-SUMMIT HOTEL, C.P.R.R. 192-SNOW SHEDS NEAR BLUE CANYON, C.P.R.R., CAL. 195-OGDEN DEPOT, C.P.R.R. [Also new view and title: Bridal Veil Fall, height 900 feet, Yosemite Valley, Cal.; Old series, No. 431; L. Dowe.] 200-SILVER RAPIDS, BLUE CANYON, C.P.R.R., CAL. 201-RAILROAD TRESTLE WORK CROSSING BEAR RIVER, CAL. 203-FIRE TRAIN AT THE SUMMITS, C.P.R.R., CAL. [E. Nesemann, No. 203.] 205-PULPIT ROCK, U.P.R.R. ]E. Nesemann, No, 205.1 207-RAILROAD TRESTLE WORK, CROSSING BEAR RIVER, CAL. 208-MOSHER FALLS, BLUE CANYON, C.P.R.R., CAL. 210-UTAH CENTRAL R.R. COMING INTO OGDEN, CAL. 215-EASTERN BOUND TEA TRAIN AT BLUE CANYON, C.P.R.R., CAL. [Diamond H; E. Nesemann, No. 215.] 216-LONG RAVINE BRIDGE, NEAR COLFAX, C.P.R.R., CAL. 217-BLOOMER CUT, C.P.R.R., CAL. 218-GOLD BEARING PYRAMID, GOLD RUN, C.P.R.R., CAL. 219-HYDRAULIC MINING, GOLD RUN, C.P.R.R. [E. Nesemann, No. 219.1 221-PALISADE CITY, C.P.R.R. 223-OVERLAND TRAIN COMING ROUND CAPE HORN, C.P.R.R., CAL. 224-1000 MILE TREE, U.P.R.R. 225-CAPE HORN, C.P.R.R., CAL. 227-GOING THROUGH THE PALISADES, C.P.R.R. 228-PASSENGER TRAIN GOING THROUGH THE PALISADES, C.P.R.R. 233-DONNER LAKE AND SNOW SHEDS, C.P.R.R., CAL. 235-C.P. RAILROAD BRIDGE, SACRAMENTO, CAL. 237-PICNIC GROUNDS IN BOWER CAVE, NEAR YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. 238-ENTRANCE INTO BOWER CAVE, NEAR YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [American Series/American Series; American Views/American Views; E.P. Best.] 239-AMERICAN RIVER, FROM CAPE HORN, C.P.R.R. 241-C.P.R.R PASSENGER DEPOT, SACRAMENTO, CAL. 243-YOSEMITE VALLEY FROM 3000 FT. ABOVE. 244-LAKE IN BOWER CAVE NEAR YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. 245-BIRDS ON THE FARALLON ISLANDS, PACIFIC OCEAN, CAL. 246-LYELL GROUP, FARALLON ISLANDS, PACIFIC OCEAN, CAL. 249-LIGHTHOUSE POINT, FARALLON ISLANDS, PACIFIC OCEAN, CAL. 251-LIGHT HOUSE, FARALLON ISLANDS, PACIFIC OCEAN, CAL. [E. Nesemann, No. 251.] 252-NATURAL BRIDGE, FARALLON ISLANDS, PACIFIC OCEAN, CAL. 256-FROM THE GATE OF GRANITE CASTLE, SIERRAS, CAL. [American Scenery /American Scenery; Miller & Best; 1G. Parks. 258-YOSEMITE FALLS, HEIGHT 2634 FEET, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. 259-SAW RIDGE, SIERRAS, CAL. [J.G. Parks.] 260-MIRROR VIEW OF YOSEMITE FALLS, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. 4. nn--[SAN CARLOS DE BORROMEO MISSION CHURCH, CARMEL, CAL. Orange and lavender card; Department of Special Collections, U.C.L.A. Research Library.] Five miles south of the Monterey presidio, on the side of a knoll by the mouth of the Rio Carmelo, the Mission San Car/os was the seat of authority for the chain of twenty-one missions that extended from San Diego to Sonoma in Alta California, and it became the burial place of the first Padre-presidente of the missions, Junipero Serra. The third church to occupy the site was completed m1797. The large stellar window piercing its massive stone, facade and the attenuated mores que dome capping its staunch, square campanario make the church an unusual example of Spanish colonial architecture. By a decree of the Mexican Congress, the Franciscan missions were secularized in 1835, and most of the old buildings soon fell into a sad state of disrepair. The barrel vault of the Carmel church came tumbling to the ground in 1852. The idea of preserving the roofless and ruinous church was conceived on San Car/os Day, 1879, by Robert Louis Stevenson. As an antiquity in the New World, a quaint specimen of missionary architecture, and a memorial of good deeds, the young British writer thought it had a triple claim to preservation. His letter to the Monterey Californian made a direct appeal to Yankee pragmatism by stressing a fourth reason for preserving the mission: its indirect value as a tourist attraction. Within weeks, both local newspapers had joined the campaign for preservation. The Californian thought a restored church might indeed add much of interest to engage the attention of tourists. The expense will not be great and then, it is but casting our bread upon the water. A local Catholic priest was placed in charge of the actual restoration. In 1884, the low-pitched tile roof of the old Carmel church was replaced by a steep shingle roof, and the sanctuary was rededicated to worship. The homeliness of the new roof was surpassed only by the incongruity of its superimposition behind the old facade. Watkins, Taber, Fiske, and Reilly had already published views of the old churchs ruins in the early 1880s, before over-zealous structural alterations transformed these photographs into valuable documents for the architectural historian. The entire church received a full and accurate restoration in the 1930s. 20 262-LEIDIGS HOTEL AND SENTINEL ROCK, HEIGHT 3012 FT. YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [Old series, No. 563; Richard Behrendt, No. 538; G. Fagersteen. I 263-CLOUDS REST AND MERCED RIVER, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. 264-MERCED RIVER AND GLACIER POINT, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [M. M. Hazeltine; S.C. Walker & C. Fagersteen.] 265-HUTCHINGS COTTAGE, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. 266-CAP OF LIBERTY AND NEVADA FALL, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. 267-HUTCHINGS HOTEL, YOSEMITE, CAL. [also new view and title: Nevada Fall, 700 feet high, Yosemite Valley, Cal.; Old Series, No. 548; Stereoscopic Views.] 269-SENTINEL DOME, HEIGHT 4500 FT. YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. 270- YOSEMITE VALLEY FROM INSPIRATION POINT, CAL. 271-MIRROR LAKE CANYON, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [Old series, No. 535; G.HAldrich&Company, No. 862; C.P. Hibbard, No. 62; Littleton View Company, No. 862; Union View Company, No. 572; C.W. Woodward, No. 572.] 272-FALLING CLOUDS, OVER YOSEMITE FALLS, CAL. 274-CATHEDRAL ROCKS, HEIGHT 2660 FT. YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [Old series, No. 452.] 275-YOSEMITE FALLS, HEIGHT 2,634 FEET, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. No. 384--DEL MONTE HOTEL DINING ROOM, MONTEREY, CAL. [Orange and lavender card,] The Hotel del Monte was the first of the great Western tourist resorts. It was built and finished in three months by the Southern Pacific Railroads construction subsidiary, the Pacific Improvement Company. The management threw open its door for genteel patronage on June 3, 1880. The Improvement Company had disregarded both local and national traditions in building its modern hotel of Swiss Gothic architecture more like a modern English country mansion than an American watering-place hotel, and its 1880s guidebook to the Monterey peninsula delighted in boasting of its recent improvements. San Francisco society descended on the Monterey peninsula for the opening of the Del Monte Hotel. Speaking as it strikes a stranger, Robert Louis Stevenson had fostered preservation in the name of tourism in November 1879, but twelve months later, he had come to regret the exchange of the Monterey he had known for the new resort of wealth and fashion : Monterey is adver- 276-NEVADA FALL, HEIGHT 700 FEET, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [Old series, No. 437; New Educational Series, No. 273.] 277- NORTH AND SOUTH DOMES, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. 278-YOSEMITE FALLS, HEIGHT 2634 FEET, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [MM. Hazeltine; E. Nesemann, No. 278; S.C. Walker & C. Fagersteen. 279-THREE BROTHERS HEIGHT 3,830 FEET, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [Richard Behrendt, No. 531; Diamond H: E. Nesemann, No. 279.] 280-BRIDAL VEIL FALLS, HEIGHT 900 FEET YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [American Scenery/ Yosemite Valley, California; 1W. & J. S. Moulton, No. 25; Ropes & Company, No. 25; C.W. Woodward, No. 592; Woodward & Albee, No. 592.] 281-GLACIER POINT, HEIGHT 3,200 FEET, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. 284-MIRROR LAKE AND ITS REFLECTIONS, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. 285-MT. HOFFMANN RANGE FROM SENTINEL DOME, YOSEMITE VALLEY. 286-DAY DAWN, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. 287-YOSEMITE FALLS, HEIGHT 2634 FEET, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. 288-SNOWS HOTEL AND NEVADA FALLS, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. tised in the newspapers, and posted in the waiting-rooms at railway stations, as a resort for wealth and fashion. Alas for the little town! It is not strong enough to resist the influence of the flaunting caravan-serail, and the poor, quaint, penniless native gentlemen of Monterey must perish, like a lower race, before the millionaire vulgarians of the Big Bonanza. In Europe, remarked a French traveller who visited the United States in 1887, the hotel is a means to an end. In America, it is the end. People travel hundreds, nay, thousands of miles for the pleasure of putting up at certain hotels . . . Hotels are for them [Americans] what cathedrals, monuments, ruins, and the beauties of Nature are for us. From 1884 to 1886 the Southern Pacific Railroad had displayed Reillys views at three large exhibitions in the southeastern United States. In 1887 the Hotel del Monte was destroyed by fire, then rebuilt and enlarged in record time. Reilly probably made a second trip to Monterey in 1891, and he may have taken some souvenir portraits of a few millionaire vulgarians. 1 j1iI.v[IQ: low r 21 290-MIRROR VIEW OF NORTH DOME, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [Old series, No. 560.[ 291-NORTH DOME, HEIGHT 3568 FT., YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [Also view and title: El Capitan, height 3,300 feet, Yosemite Valley, Cal.; E. Nesemann, No. 301] 292-AGASSIZ COLUMN, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [MM. Hazeltine. 294-THREE GRACES AND BRIDAL VEIL FALL, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. 296-VERNAL FALL, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [Old Series, No. 426; American Scenery/ Standard Series, No. 49; Pacific Coast West from Omaha, No. 49.1 297-REAR VIEW OF SOUTH DOME AND CLOUDS REST FROM GLACIER PT., YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. 298-MIRROR VIEW CATHEDRAL ROCKS, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [Old series, No. 573; E. Nesemann, No. 298; Pacific Coast West from Omaha, No. 29.] 300-HALF DOME, WASHINGTON COLUMN AND NORTH DOME, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. 302-WASHINGTON COLUMN AND HALF DOME, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [Old series, No. 544; M.M. Hazeltine; S.C. Walker & G. Fagersteen.[ 304-CLOUDS REST, HEIGHT 6034 FEET, AND THUNDER CLOUDS, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. 305-THE LOST ARROW, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [Old series, No. 438; Pacific Coast West from Omaha, No. 15.] 306-MIRROR VIEW OF CLOUDS REST, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. 311-CAP OF LIBERTY, HEIGHT 6034 FEET, AND NEVADA FALLS, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. 312-VERNAL FALL, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [Old series, No. 407.1 314-YOSEMITE UPPER FALL, FROM TOP OF LOWER FALL, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. 315-THE FIRST HOUSE IN YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. 316-WASHINGTON COLUMN AND NORTH DOME, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [Miller & Best.] 317-YOSEMITE FALLS, HEIGHT 2634 FEET, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [Old series, No. 543.[ 318-YOSEMITE UPPER FALLS, FROM TOP OF LOWER FALLS, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL, [Old series, No. 516; Ferrier & Soulier, No. 10264; M.M. Hazeltine; E. Nesemann, No. 318; S.C. Walker & G. Fagersteen. 319-GLACIER POINT, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [Old series, No. 497; Pittsburgh Daily News, No. 569; C.W. Woodward, No. 569.] 320-A STROLL AMONG THE CALAVERAS BIG TREES. 321-BEAUTY OF THE FOREST, MARIPOSA GROVE, CAL. 324-PYRAMID PEAK, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. TG. Parks.] 328-BALL-ROOM ON STUMP OF BIG TREE, CALAVERAS GROVE, CAL. [Richard Behrendt, No. 549; Miller & Best. 329-GRIZZLY GIANT, 32 FEET IN DIAM., MARIPOSA GROVE, CAL. [E. Nesemann, No. 329.] 330-CHIP OFF THE OLD BLOCK, CALAVERAS GROVE, CAL. 333-MIRROR VIEW OF THREE BROTHERS, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [E. Nesemann, No. 333.[ 334-ABRAHAM LINCOLN, CALAVERAS GROVE, CAL. 335-TUOLUMNE RIVER, SIERRAS, CAL. [Old series, No. 525.1 340-WINTER FRUIT TREES AT NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. 344-SECOND BRIDGE TO THE THREE SISTERS ISLANDS, NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. 352-MOONLIGHT VIEW ON NIAGARA RIVER, NEW YORK. 354-CRYSTAL GROTTO, UNDER THE NIAGARA FALLS, NEW YORK. 356-CORAL TREES OF NIAGARA, IN WINTER, [Old series, No. 52. 365-NIAGARA IN WINTER, FROM CAVE OF THE WINDS, NEW YORK. 366-TERRAPIN TOWER, FROM CAVE OF THE WINDS, NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. 367-BRIDAL CHAMBER, NIAGARA FALLS, TEW YORK. 370-CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK. 374-ICE ALLEY, NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y, 378-BRIDAL CHAMBERS, NIAGARA FALLS, CANADA SIDE. 380-CALIFORNIA THRESHING MACHINE. 383-DEL MONTE HOTEL, MONTEREY, CAL. 384-DEL MONTE HOTEL DINING ROOM, MONTEREY, CAL. 389-BATH HOUSE ON THE BEACH AT MONTEREY, CAL. 392-GEORGE WASHINGTON, CALAVERAS GROVE, CAL. 395-GOLDEN GATE FROM BLACK POINT, SAN FRANCISCO, 22 CAL. 398-D ST., MARYSVILLE, CAL. 399-D STREET LOOKING SOUTH, MARYSVILLE, CAL. 400-STEAMER BAY CITY, OAKLAND FERRY, SAN FRANCISCO. ]E. Nesemann, No. 400.[ 401-OAKLAND HARBOR, OAKLAND, CAL. [E. Nesemann, No. 401.] 402-BUTTE MOUNTAINS FROM MARYSVILLE, CAL. 403-MARYSVILLE LOOKING WEST, CAL. 405-EAGLE ROCK, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. 406-TEN THOUSAND FEET OF LUMBER ON ORE WAGON, MARYSVILLE, CAL. [Also variant negative; Richard Behrendt, No. 534; E. Nesemann, No. 485.[ 407-C.P.R.R. DEPOT AND BUCKEYE MILLS, MARYSVILLE, CAL. 409-COURT HOUSE, MARYSVILLE, CAL. 410-HOFFMANN TOWER, SIERRAS, CAL. [J.G. Parks.] 412-CATHEDRAL CASCADES, SIERRAS, CAL. 413-UNICORN PEAK, SIERRAS, CAL. 414-EAGLE PEAKS, SIERRAS, CAL. 416-CRATER OF THE VOLCANO AT MONO LAKE, SIERRAS, CAL. 417-CATHEDRAL PASS, SIERRAS, CAL. [J. G. Parks.[ 418-VIEW FROM CATHEDRAL PEAK, SIERRAS, CAL. RESIDENCE AT EUREKA, CAL. [Reproduced from a pho- toengraving in the St. Louis & Canadian Photographer (1894).] The ostentatious, three-story home of William Carson is one of Americas most elaborate examples of late Victorian architecture in the Eastlake style. The building project had kept many of Carsons mill workers on the payroll through the recession of the mid-1880s. His gawky, redwood mansion was photographed by Reilly in 1893, at the outset of the worst financial panic of the century. The highest unemployment rate of the entire depression was recorded in June 1894, Unwanted and adrift, the itinerant photographer had wandered back to San Francisco. It was a city with a hundred and fifty millionaires, but 1. 1. Reilly was out of work and out of money. By the end of the month he had resolved his feelings of ennui and despondency; he had committed suicide. 419-VIEW ACROSS THE SIERRAS, CAL. [Old series, No. 508; J.G. Parks. I 420-TWIN PEAKS, TUOLUMNE CO., CAL. hG. Parks.[ 421-CATHEDRAL PEAK, SIERRAS, CAL. 422-OUTSIDE VIEW OF THE VOLCANO AT MONO LAKE, SIERRAS, CAL. 425-DISTANT VIEW OF CATHEDRAL PEAK, SIERRAS, CAL. [Old series, No. 534; Miller & Best.] 426-MOUNT DANA, SIERRAS, CAL. [Old series, No. 493; American Scenery /American Scenery.] 427-THE LYELL GROUP, SIERRAS, CAL. hG. Parks.] 428-TUOLUMNE RAPIDS, SIERRAS, CAL. hG. Parks.] 429-BIRDSEYE VIEW OF THE VOLCANOS AT MONO LAKE, SIERRAS, CAL. [Old series, No. 529.] 432-DEVILS STEAM BATH, GEYSER SPRINGS. 436-DEVILS TEAKETTLE, GEYSER SPRINGS, CAL. [E. Nesemann, No. 436.] 438-GEYSER SPRINGS HOTEL, SONOMA CO., CAL. 440-DEVILS WORKSHOP, GEYSER SPRINGS, CAL. 442-DEVILS PUNCH BOWL, GEYSER SPRINGS, CAL. 443-MEXICAN CACTUS. 445-GEORGETOWN, COL. 448-GATE OF THE GARDEN OF THE GODS, COL. 449-THE MAMMOTH ANVIL, MONUMENT PARK, COL. 450-NATURAL MONUMENTS, IN MONUMENT PARK, COL. 451-NATURAL MONUMENT IN MONUMENT PARK, COL. 452-KEARNEY STREET PLAZA, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 454-BABY CAMEL IN WOODWARDS GARDENS, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 458-SANTA CRUZ NARROW GAUGE R.R. BRIDGE, CAL. 459-SANTA CRUZ BIG TREES, CAL. hE. Nesemann, No. 459.] 461-LOS GATOS CREEK, SANTA CRUZ NARROW GAUGE R.R., CAL. 462-TUNNEL No. 2, SANTA CRUZ NARROW GAUGE R.R. 463-THE SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS OVER NARROW GAUGE R.R., CAL. 464-CAL. POWDER WORKS, NEAR SANTA CRUZ NARROW GAUGE R.R., CAL. 466-SANTA CRUZ NARROW GAUGE R.R. BRIDGE. 470-GOLDEN GATE PARK. 475-U.S. MINT, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 476-PHELAN BUILDING, MARKET STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 478-NEW CITY HALL, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. [E. Nesemann, No. 478.1 479-GEARY STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. The economy was depressed; the competition, intense. Even the fittest were struggling to survive. The nationwide business recession of 1873-74 was followed by the Bank of Californias suspension of business in 1875. In the wake of the second financial panic, operating capital became very 9 I I- -. J.J Reilly, /YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. /Photographic Views/OF AMERICAN SCENERY. No. 556 VERNAL AND NEVADA FALLS, FROM GLACIER POINT, YO SEMITE VALLEY, CAL. ..-.. .-,- _ I scarce in San Francisco. Watkins was forced into bankruptcy; creditors gained control of his gallery, most of his staff, and almost all his landscape negatives. Houseworth owed fifteen thousand dollars to thirty-two creditors; he lost a lawsuit for thirty-five hundred dollars. A year in arrears in paying his rent, he was forced to abandon his sales emporium beneath the Lick House. Reillys only business address in San Francisco was a post office box. At $1.50 per dozen, stereographs alone could not begin to cover the costs of operating even a small photo gallery. He produced his stereo and cabinet cards at home, either by himself or with one or two assistants. By displaying his views at an industrial fair (1875) and at a worlds fair (1876), Reilly did succeed in gaining some publicity for his work, but he failed to arrange for a satisfactory retail outlet to sell it. By the standards of Watkins or Houseworth, his volume of production and sales was negligible: an occasional wholesale lot sold to a local book store or newsstand. Reillys attempt to penetrate the San Francisco market can [Yellow card. Also published by G. Fagersteen, by M.M Hazeltine, by Joseph LeConte, and by Clark, Lake & Co.] LOVEJOY & FOSTER, /CHICAGO, ILL./nn-YOSEMITE VAL. CAL. [verso]. [Yellow and light grey card.] only be described as a dismal failure. By 1877 he was also marketing his cards through the only Photographic Art Gallery in Marysville, California. Within a few years he had decided that a monopoly in a small town was preferable to a precarious foothold in a city thirty-five times its size. Reilly succeeded Amos Woods as the proprietor of the gallery in the summer of 1879. He continued to make and sell new stereographs, but taking portraits became his primary occupation, his primary source of income. After years of hardship, he wanted a little financial security, but he paid a heavy price for it: the freedom and opportunity he had once known as an independent view photographer. No believer in trade secrets or cutthroat competition, Reilly was pleased to share his chemical formulas and working methods with the fraternity, with his brother photographers, even though he had already come to a harsh, new realization about the business of making and selling stereo views: 10 zr_ - .. - Photographic Views,/By J.J. REILLY and J.P. SPOONER. /Kidds Block, Stockton, /CALIFORNIA. /No. W. L. Hoffs/ Stereoscopic Views/of American and Foreign Scenery.! Published at the/National Stereoscope Emporium, /37 Detroit St. La Grange, Indiana [verso]./nn-NEVADA FALLS, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [verso]. [Orange and lavender card; collection of Louis H. Smaus. Also published by G.H. Aldrich & Company as No. 863 and by the Littleton View Company as No. 863.] Our art is beautiful, but the trouble is, the men who spend both time and money in the way of trying to make fine work are poorly paid for it... Fine work is not appreciated by the public in stereoscopic views. The man who can furnish the cheapest sells (the) most without regard to quality.. This is discouraging, to say the least.. In 1857 the socialist art critic John Ruskin had defined the just price of a work of art as the price which will pay the painter for his time.28 Failing to receive additional compensation for his extra time and trouble, Reilly became discouraged, then depressed, then despondent. His fine cloud effects from his hard-earned negatives were accorded no more value in the marketplace than cheap, pirated views of the poorest kind .29 Receiving a just price for his work played a critical role in developing and maintaining Reillys self-image as an artist. In 1881, a Far Western journal published an article on the detrimental impact of frontier isolation and primitivism in the production of art: The Pacific Coast is a test crucible for new-fledged artists... It is a destroying test for a man of ; c 413-NEVADA FALLS, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CALIFORNIA. [Orange and lavender card. I , ,. i i talent, a difficult one for a man of genius. In one of the enclaves of Europe, an American artist might receive stimulation from his peers and encouragement from his patrons, but in the West, the frontier artist had to contend with cultural isolation and an unappreciative, nonpurchasing public. He must live within himself and for his art. Otherwise, warned the journal, he will lose his selfrespect and sell his talents by doing cheap, unworthy work-not for the necessities but for the luxuries of life. -10 To the end of his publishing career, Reillys production quality remained high. Despite the inequity of the price he received for his imprint, he never allowed shoddy craftsmanship to carry his name. He was unwilling to lose his self-respect and sell his talents by doing cheap, unworthy work, even for the necessities of life. A Joy Forever (and Its Price on the Market) was the original title of Ruskins lectures at the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition (1857). The title was intended as an ironic reference to the motto of the exhibition: A thing of beauty is a joy forever (Keats). An American publisher 11 No. 413. -Nevada Fills, Yosemite Valley, California. ! . U .... I) .11 144 J.J. REILLY & CO./YO SEMITE VALLEY, CAL./ PHOTOGRAPHIC VIEWS /OF AMERICAN SCENERY./nn- GLACIER POINT, HEIGHT 3,700 FEET, YOSEMITE VALLEY, U 0 o 64 V },,., I\,,t; h.ht.3.JlnDuSt. CAL. [Orange and lavender card. Also published by Reilly in his new series as No. 281.] G. Fagersteen, Photographer.! Yosemite Valley, California./nnFROM GLACIER POINT; HEIGHT, 3,200 FEET. [Variant negative. Orange and lavender card; collection of Louis H. Smaus. Another variant negative also published by J.G. Parks, Montreal.] P gave Ruskins lectures a fuller, even more caustic title in 1886, the year that Reilly abandoned his stereo negatives. The photographer was still unwilling to do cheap, unworthy work, and he was no longer willing to sell beautiful prints from these hard-earned negatives for the same low price as pirated views of the poorest kind. HE HAS SOME NEGATIVES FOR SALE Perhaps it is not well to have a great deal of good art; and that it should not be made too cheap. Nay, I can imagine some the more generous among you, exclaiming, we will not trouble you to disprove that objection; of course it is a selfish and base one: good art, as well as other good things, ought to be made as cheap as possible, and put as far as we can within the reach of everybody. Pardon me, lam not prepared to admit that. I rather side with the selfish objectors, and believe that art ought not to be made cheap, beyond a certain point... Here, then, is the subtle balance which your economist has to strike: to accumulate so much art as to be able to give the whole nation a supply of it, according to its need, and yet to regulate its distribution so that there shall be no glut of it, nor contempt. Ruskin, The Political Economy of Art, Lecture II In 1870 only four towns in all of California were inhabited by more than ten thousand people: San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, and Stockton. Of the four, only San Francisco and Stockton really catered to tourists. From 1870 to 1874, Reilly spent his summers in Yosemite and his winters in Stockton. In winter, he made the prints that he marketed year-round through a succession of local portrait photographers: John Pitcher Spooner, Elon Delamore Ormsby, and Benjamin Pierce Batchelder. His provincial distribution system catered to a large transient population of Yosemite and Big Tree tourists and to a small local clientele. Reilly had always sought to broaden his market through outside retail distributors. From 1867 through 1872, he sold large wholesale lots of his stereo cards for two dollars a dozen .31 One Illinois distributor listed eight views of Utah Territory and the Calaveras Big Tree Grove in a supplement 12 -I OWN- J. J. Reilly, Marysville, Cal/ Views of American Scenery./ No. 271-MIRROR LAKE CANYON, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [Orange and lavender card; collection of Louis H. Smaus. Also published by Reilly in his old series as No. 535.] C.W. WOODWARD. /ROCHESTER N.Y./GRANDEUR OF THE YOSEMITE/No. 572-MT. WATKINS AND TENAYA CANYON. [Variant cloud negative. Orange and lavender card; collection of Louis H. Smaus. Also published by the Union View Company as No. 572.] CALIFORNIA VIEWS,/PHOTOGRAPHED & PUBLISHED/ BY/G.H. ALDRICH & CO. LITTLETON, N.H. [verso]/No. 862-MIRROR LAKE CANYON. [Variant cloud negative. Orange and pink card. Also published by C. P. Hibbard as No. 62 and by the Littleton View Company as No. 862.] J.J. Reilly, /YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. /Photographic Views/OF AMERICAN SCENERY./No. 446-MOTHER OF THE FOREST, DIAMETER [sic] 78 FT., CALAVERAS GROVE, CAL. [Yellow card.] James Cremer, Photographer and Publisher,/18 South Eighth Street, Philadelphia. /nn-MOTHER OF THE FOREST, 350 FT. HIGH, 63 FT. IN CIRCUMFERENCE, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [verso]. [Orange and lavender card.] Published By/THE ATLAS VIEW COMPANY/147 Fifth Avenue, CHICAGO/THE ATLAS STEREOGRAPHS/nn-GIANT OF THE FOREST, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CAL. [Chromolithograph; grey and white card. Also published on the American Views/Standard Series imprint.] to his catalog of January 1870. Within a few years his firm was marketing at least seventeen of Reillys Yosemite views. Some of these views were also published by another Illinois firm, active in Chicago from 1871 to 1879. For more than fifty years, Reillys views were marketed on the imprints of at least five publishers active in northern Illinois or northern Indiana: J.H. Clark & Company; Clark, Lake & Company Cal. J.J. Reilly, Marysville, Cal/Views of American Scenery/No. 135-PALACE HOTEL, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. [Orange and lavender card. Also published by E. P. Best and by Miller & Best, Lovejoy & Foster, W.L. Hoff; and the Atlas View Company. Reilly sought to further broaden his market in the winter of 1873. The February issue of the Philadelphia Photographer describes eight of his Yosemite and Big Tree views (including Nos. 413, 430, and 496) as the best we have seen of those subjects for a long time. He has some negatives for sale .31 His duplicte negatives were purchased or printed by at least five Philadelphia manufacturers of stereo cards or lantern slides or both. In the 1860s and 70s, James Cremers Stereoscopic Emporium marketed Yosemite and Big Tree views by Muybridge, Pond, and Reilly. In the 1870s, optician L.J. Marcy made lantern slides of the Sierra from negatives by Roche, Bierstadt, and Reilly.36 Lantern slides from Reillys negatives of the Yosemite were marketed by Edward L. Wilson from 1874 to 1888 37 and by William H. Rau from 1889 to 1894.38 Griffith & Griffith, active from 1896 to 1917, printed at least one of the stereo negatives in Reillys 1873 lot (No. 496). Fifty-three Reilly negatives (including No. 430) were pur- and on imprints entitled American Scenery/American Scenery, Stereo Views, and Stereoscopic Views.] E. Nesemann, Marysville, Cal./ Manufacturer of Stereoscopic Views./No. 135-PALACE HOTEL, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. [Variant negative. Orange and lavender card.] chased or acquired by a succession of Rochester firms: Woodward & Lord (1874), C.W. Woodward (1875-82), the Union View Company (1882-83), Woodward & Albee (1884) 40 Woodward also manufactured Reilly views on a wholesale basis for the Pittsburgh Daily News. From the 1870s into the 1890s, at least twenty-three Reilly negatives (including Nos. 413 and 496) were published by a succession of three New Hampshire firms: C.P. Hibbard, G.H. Aldrich & Company, and the Littleton View Company. A fourth set of the 1873 negatives (including No. 496) was marketed on three quality, wholesale imprints: American Scenery/Tourist Series (eleven views), American Scenery/ Standard Series (fifty-seven views), and the Pacific Coast West from Omaha (the same fifty-seven numbers and titles). These imprints can all be reasonably attributed to a photographer of the Boston area, C. Seaver. The wholesale and retail competition-some of it, of Reillys own making-had become quite intense by the summer of 1874. In two years, the dealer rate for wholesale lots of a J J.J. Reilly, Marysville, Cal/Views of American Scenery/No. 406-TEN THOUSAND FEET OF LUMBER ON ORE WAGON, MARYSVILLE, CAL. [Orange and lavender card; collection of Gordon L. Bennett.] V .- stereo cards with Reillys imprint had dropped from twentyfour to twelve dollars per gross42 (one dollar per dozen). For a few more years, Reilly continued to ask a just price for his work. In the spring of 1875, when he enjoyed a monopoly on direct sales to Yosemite tourists, he was able to ask 1868 retail prices for his views: three dollars a dozen for stereo, six dollars a dozen for cabinet.43 The following sum- C= S 4 - LI C. M E. Nesemann, Publisher. /Marysville, California/No. 485-OX TEAM WITH 10,000 FEET OF LUMBER, CAL. [Variant negative. Curved buff card.] PUBLISHED BY/Richard Behrendt, San Francisco /Golden Gate Series/No. 534-OX TEAM WITH 10,000 FEET OF LUMBER, CAL. [Variant negative. Curved middle grey card.] mer, the shared monopoly of Reilly & Co. was still asking fifty cents apiece for its large views. After an exchange of duplicate negatives between Reilly and Hazeltine, some of Reillys views continued to be sold in the Valley under the successive imprints of Hazeltine (1877), Walker & Fagersteen (1877-81), and Fagersteen (1881-90). A set of at least fifty-seven negatives by Hazeltine and Reilly was marketed by J. W. & J. S. Moulton, publishers of stereoscopic views from 1876 to 1881. These views of Yosemite and the high Sierra were manufactured by the Moultons in Salem, and distributed from Massachusetts to Minnesota on at least eight retail imprints: by the father and son together and by the son alone in Salem, Massachusetts; by Dodge, Collier & Perkins in Boston; by H. Ropes & Company and by Surdam & White in New York City; by James Matthews in Rochester, New York; by Lovejoy & Foster in Chicago; and by Elmer & Tenney in Winona, Minnesota. The Moultons also marketed these views on a variety of card stocks under two wholesale imprints: American Scenery/The Yosemite Valley, California and Yosemite Valley, California. Reilly was often published, and sometimes victimized, by other photographers and publishers. Without permission or payment, several firms made copy negatives of his stereo cards. Substandard prints were then mass-produced from the copy negatives. These cheap, pirated views flooded the marketplace, clogging Reillys sales outlets, raising havoc with his price for quality work. Pirated Reilly cards were marketed under the imprints of at least two picture dealers: Perry Mason & Company, of Boston, and Myers & Smith, of Canton, Ohio. These dealer imprints, and many of the anonymous ones on other shoddy Reilly views, can all be attributed to one or both of the two most brazen stereo pirates of the second half of the 1870s: William Miller and E.P. Best, of New York City, New Haven, and Boston. For thirty-seven years, Reillys views were distributed by at least thirteen men in northern California: by himself in Yosemite Valley, Stockton, San Francisco, and Marysville; by his two partners and by a third photographer in Stockton; by his three successors in the Yosemite Valley; by his predecessor and his successor in Marysville; and by four men in San Francisco. Joseph LeConte distributed nine Reilly views in a self-published book (1875); his Journal of Ramblings was printed by a San Francisco firm. Between 1875 and 1879, Reillys cards were marketed by a San Francisco bookseller, Chilion Beach. A small set of duplicate or variant Reilly negatives was printed and marketed by L. Dowe, the proprietor of a gallery at the corner of 4th and Market streets from 1883 to 1885.46 Reillys master set of stereo negatives and a large, leftover supply of his cards was published or marketed (or both) by Enno Nesemann, of Marysville, from 1887 to 1900. Some of Nesemanns Reilly views were acquired by Richard Behrendt, a publisher in San Francisco from 1903 until the earthquake of 1906. In the early 1870s, Reilly had sold large sets of duplicate and variant negatives to several foreign publishers: J.G. Parks in Montreal, Ferrier & Soulier in Paris. Making these sales was a simple exercise in Yankee pragmatism. Without closing viable potential markets to the sale of his own cards, he had realized a quick return on a substantial investment of time and materials. He had exercised poor judgment in deciding to sell his negatives to firms in the most populous regions of his own country: the mid-Atlantic states, New England, and the Midwest. While active as a stereo publisher in San Francisco, he had exchanged negatives with a photographer in Yosemite Valley. As a publisher in Marysville, he had sold negatives to a photographer in San Francisco. After making the decision to move his business to a new location, he sealed his decision each time by burning his bridges behind him. He wrote off large potential markets and tourist outlets, one after another, for the remainder of his publishing career. By 1870, the competition from other photographers and publishers was already becoming cutthroat. By selling his negatives, Reilly created new rivals who further intensified the competition. In effect, he cut his own throat. By 1886, his only remaining retail outlet was a gallery in a small country town, and to a large extent, he had himself to blame for it. FOOTNOTES John Ruskin, The Political Economy of Art: or, A Joy Forever (and Its Price on the Market); Being the Substance (with Additions) of Two Lectures Delivered at Manchester, July 10th and 13th, 1857 (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1886), p. 34. J.D. W(hitney) to (W.H.) Brewer, 19 March 1866, Josiah Dwight Whitney-William Henry Brewer Correspondence, C-B 312, Bancroft Library. Whitney to Brewer, 10 December 1866. Whitney to Brewer, 18 December 1866. Whitney to Brewer, 18 February 1867. Whitney to Brewer, 28 February 1870. For detailed information on these four publishers, see Peter E. Palmquist, Carleton E. Watkins, Photographer oftheAmerican West (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press for the Amon Carter Museum, 1983), Gordon Hendricks, EadweardMuybridge: The Father of the Motion Picture (New York: Grossman Publishers, Viking Press, 1975), William Marder and Estelle Marder, Anthony: The Man, the Company, the Cameras (Amesbury, Massachusetts: Pine Ridge Publishing Company, 1982), and Peter E. Palmquist, Lawrence & Housewort h/Thomas Houseworth & Co.: A Unique View of the West, 1860-1886 (Columbus, Ohio: National Stereoscopic Association, 1980). For further information on the photographer, see Peter E. Palmquist, Californias Peripatetic Photographer: Charles Leander Weed, Califor- nia History 58 (Fall 1979):194-219. For a checklist of his earliest stereographs, see New Catalogue of Stereoscopes and Views (New York: E. Anthony, 1860), p. 15, or see Peter E. Palmquist, Yosemites First Stereo Photographer: Charles Leander Weed (1824-1903), Stereo World 6 (September-October 1979):10-11. For discussion, interpretation, and analysis on the ill-timed expansion and subsequent bankruptcy of the Yosemite Art Gallery, see Paul Hickman, Carleton E. Watkins, 1829-1916, Northlight, no, 1, January 1977, pp. 14-15, 17-19; Peter E. Palmquist, Watkins-The Photographer as Publisher, California History 57 (Fall 1978): 252-57; Paul Hickman, On the Life and Photographic Works of George Fiske, George Fiske: Yosemite Photographer (Flagstaff, Arizona: Northland Press in cooperation with the Center for Creative Photography, the University of Arizona, 1980), pp. 7-10; and Palmquist, Carleton E. Watkins, pp.42-46,51-53. Gems of California Scenery: Catalogue of Views, 3d ed. (San Francisco: Lawrence & Houseworth, 1866), p. 43. Whitney to Brewer, 7 February 1868. California Mail Bag 1 (July 1871):n. pag. California Mail Bag 1 (August 1871):xxviii. For a checklist, see Peter E. Palmquist, Soules California Stereographs, Stereo World 8 (March/April 1981):5-10. For a checklist of the firms first series of California views, see Catalogue of Stereoscopic Views (Littleton, New Hampshire: Kilburn Brothers, c. 1875), pp. 19-20, or see Robert G. Duncan, Kilburn Brothers Stereograph Titles, Photographic Collector 2 (Fall 1981):33. Catalogue of Photographic Views Illustrating the Yosemite, Mammoth Trees, Geyser Springs, and Other Remarkable and Interesting Scenery in the Far West (San Francisco: Bradley & Rulofson, 1873). William H. Rulofson to (Edward L.) Wilson, 13 May 1874, Philadelphia Photographer 11 (July 1874):208. The San Francisco Directory for the Year Commencing April, 1874, s. v. Polycarpo Bagnasco (photographic printer), Charles D. Bonestel, William White Dames (photographer), Sally L. Dutcher (saleswoman), George Fiske (photographer), Charles Andrew Garthorne (photographer), H.C. Hayes (photographer), Charles Merck (artist), J.E. Oglesby (artist), and Alfred H. Wulzen (photographer). Chinese people were not yet listed in the city directory. Philadelphia Photographer 11 (July 1874):206, 207. 2oThe Buyers Manual and Business Guide (San Francisco: J. Price & C.S. Haley, 1872), p. 153. Thomas Houseworth, financial statement, 12 January 1876, Thomas Houseworth Papers, MS 2603, California Historical Society. 22J A. Todd, Prize Print Hints, Philadelphia Photographer 15 (April 1878):101. C. (E. Watkins) to Frankie (Watkins), 26 June 1880, Carleton E. Watkins Correspondence, Bancroft Library. If all else failed, they could always go settle and farm some federal land: his contingency plan is a good example of the provisions of the Homestead Act serving as a psychological safety valve. 4C.E. Watkins to Frankie Watkins, 30 April-2 May 1880. George B. Rieman, Corresponding Secretary of the Photographic Art Society of the Pacific, 8 January 1876, Philadelphia Photographer 13 (February 1876):46. Thomas Houseworth & Company, financial statement, 8 January 1876; Samuel C. Harding v. Thomas Houseworth, Fifteenth District Court, Summons No. 9392, 5 January 1876. J.J. Reilly, Outdoor Work on the Pacific Coast, Philadelphia Photographer 11 (July 1874):211. 2sRuskin The Political Economy of Art, p. 78. Reilly, Outdoor Work on the Pacific Coast, p. 211. Art and Artists, Californian 4 (July 1881):88. Ruskin, The Political Economy of Art, pp. 53, 56. Reilly, Outdoor Work on the Pacific Coast, p. 211. W.S. Clark, Illustrated History (Rockford, Illinois: J.H. Clark & Company, 1870), pp. 437-38. J.H. Clark & Co. was already marketing California stereographs: numbers and titles of E. & H. 1. Anthony & Co. and of Thomas Houseworth & Co. Chicago Photographers, 1847 through 1900, as Listed in the Chicago City Directories (Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, Print Department, 1958), s.v. Lovejoy & Foster. Edward Lovejoy had marketed Houseworths Yosemite views between 1870 and 1871. (Edward L. Wilson), Stereoscopic Views of the West, Philadelphia Photographer 10 (February 1873):64. L.J. Marcy, The Scioptican Manual, 1st edition (Philadelphia: By the Author, 1871), pp. 138-39 (Roche); 5th edition, 1874, p. 54 (Bierstadt); 6th edition, 1877, p. 60 (Reilly). Edward L. Wilson, Wilsons Lantern Journeys, 8th edition (New York: Edward L. Wilson, 1888), vol. 1, pp. 199-205. Illustrated Catalogue: Lantern Slides and Photographs (Philadelphia: William H. Rau, 1894), pp. 3-6. William C. Darrah, The World of Stereographs (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania: W. C. Darrah, 1977), p.52. George W. Griffith and his brother marketed the views of William H. Rau and of a successor to the successors to Edward L. Wilson. For a checklist of the negatives, see Stereoscopic Views (Rochester, New York: C.W. Woodward, 1876), pp. 28-29. For information on the firms, see Robert Penn Fordyce, Stereo Photography in Rochester, New York, up to 1900 (Rochester: By the Author, 1975), pp. 15, 17, 18-20. We have failed to locate any Yosemite views on the 1885 imprint of the Woodward Stereoscopic Company, or any of Reillys Yosemite views on the imprint of a Rochester dealer, James Matthews, who did market the cards of two known Reilly publishers, C. W. Woodward and John S. Moulton. Webster & Albee, active from 1886 to 1910, used Woodward & Albees old numbers and titles to designate a new series of Yosemite views. For a checklist of the fifty-seven views, see T. K. Treadwell and Jack Wilburn, Stereo View Back-Lists (Bryan, Texas: National Stereoscopic Association, 1984), s. v. C. Seaver. Reilly, Outdoor Work on the Pacific Coast, p. 211. 43Caroline M. Churchill, Over the Purple Hills: or Sketches of Travel in California (Chicago: Hazlitt & Reed, 1877), p. 144. 44J.J. Reilly& Company, business card, summer (1876), Yosemite National Park, ace. no. 6270. The Salem Directory, 1876, p. 133; 1881, p. 156. Langleys San Francisco Directory, 1883, p. 395; 1885, p. 415. REILLYS OLD SERIES CHECKLIST ADDITIONS In compiling these additions to our checklist of Reillys old series views (see Stereo World, 11:5), we wish to acknowledge the assistance and en- couragement of Ralph Gosse, John F. Miracle, Harry D. Porter, Ward Ryan, Louis H. Smaus, and the museum staff of Yosemite National Park. 11 SUSPENSION BRIDGE NIAGARA. 15-[Also variant negative.] 30-SUN-SET NIAGARA RIVER, N.Y. (Reilly & Spooner.) 54 THE CORAL TREES OF NIAGARA. 73-ICE CAVE UNDER NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. (Reilly & Spooner.) 93-(Previous title was published by Reilly & Spooner.) 99-AMERICAN FALLS-CANADA SIDE, JUNE 24TH 1867. (MS) 126-HORSESHOE FALLS FROM CANADA, JUNE 24TH 1867. (MS) 135-NEAR SUNSET ROCK. (MS; logo on verso: SCENERY OF/CATSKILL MOUNTAINS, /Made Wholesale and Retail, /By J.J. REILLY,/At Suspension Bridge, N.Y.) 153-CATSKILL MOUNTAIN HOUSE. (MS; same logo on verso.) 162-CATSKILL FALLS. 171-THE BEARS DENN (sic). 196-(MS; logo on verso: SCENERY OF/CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK, /Made Wholesale and Retail, By J.J. REILLY, At Suspension Bridge, N.Y.) 263-HORSE SHOE FALL FROM FERRY CANADA, NIAGARA. 304-TERRAPIN TOWER GOAT ISD. NIAGARA. 322-SUSPENSION BRIDGE NIAGARA. 389-BRIGHAM YOUNG ORGAN SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH. (Reilly & Spooner.) 402-(Previous cross-listing should have read: C.W. Woodward, No. 597.) 404-(Also Reilly & Spooner, variant negative.) 408-(Also new view and title: Lake Tenaya, Sierra Nevada Mts., Cal.) 411-(Also new cross-listing: Elmer & Tenney.) 415-(Also new view and title: Congress and Columb. Spring Saratoga.) 417-(Previous title should have read: The Three Brothers, height 3,830 ft., Yo Semite Valley, Cal. Also new cross-listing: American Scenery/ Standard Series, No. 13.) 420-(Also new cross-listing: American Scenery/ Standard Series, No. 31.) 425-(Previous title should have read: Cathedral Peak, Sierra Nevada Mts., Cal.) 426-(Previous cross-listing to variant negative of Reilly & Spooner should have read: New series, No. 296. Also new cross-listing: American Scenery/ Standard Series, No. 49.) 428-(Also new cross-listing: Miller & Best.) 434-(Also new cross-listing: C.W. Woodward, No. 571.) 438-THE LOST ARROW, YO SEMITE VALLEY, CAL. (New series, No. 305.) 446-(Also Reilly & Spooner, variant negative.) 452-(Delete previous cross-listings to C.W. Woodward, No. 592, and to Woodward & Albee, No. 592. Also new &oss-listing: C.W. Woodward, No. 575.) 456-(Also new view and title: Union Rock, Yo Semite Valley, Cal.) 468-(Previous new view and title was not published by Reilly & Spooner.) 481-BRIDAL VEIL FALL, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CALIFORNIA. (Reilly & Spooner.) 492-(Previous title should have read: Hoffman (sic) Tower, Sierra Nevada Mountains, Cal.) 496-(Also new cross-listing: Griffith & Griffith.) 497-(Also new cross-listing: C.W. Woodward, No. 569.) 508-(Previous title should have read: Cathedral Peak from Mt. Hoffman (sic), Sierra Nevada Mts., Cal.) 509-(Also new cross-listings: M. M. Hazeltine; Walker & Fagersteen.) 513-ON THE SUMMIT OF THE VOLCANO, SIERRAS, CAL. (C.W. Woodward, No. 550; negative exposed on July 28, 1871.) 516-(Also new cross-listing: M.M. Hazeltine.) 522-(Previous title should have read: Three Graces and Bridal Veil Fall, height of Rocks 2,660 ft., Yo Semite, Cal.) 525-TUOLUMNE RIVER NEAR RODE SPRINGS, SIERRAS, CAL. (New series, No. 335.) 532-(Also new cross-listing: Union View Company, No. 560.) 543-(Also new cross-listing: M.M. Hazeltine.) 544-(Also new cross-listing: MM. Hazeltine.) 556-(Also new cross-listings: M.M. Hazeltine; Joseph LeConte.) 571-LAKE TENAYA, ON THE SUMMITS SIERRAS, CAL. VIEWS BY REILLY: A CHECKLIST OF PUBLISHERS AND PIRATES Publishers Aldrich, G.H. & Co Littleton, NH Atlas View Co Chicago, IL Behrendt, Richard San Francisco, CA Best, E.P. Manufacturing Co New Haven, CT Clark, James H. & Co Rockford, IL Clark, Lake & Co Rockford, IL Cremer, James Philadelphia, PA Dodge (John F.), Collier (Samuel S.) & Perkins (Charles A.) Boston, MA Dowe, Lewis San Francisco, CA Elmer & Tenney Winona, MN Fagersteen, Gustavus A.F Yosemite Valley, CA Ferrier (Claude-Marie) & Soulier (Charles) . Paris, France Ferrier (Pere et Fils) & Soulier, J. Levy Paris, France Griffith (George W.) & Griffith Philadelphia, PA Hazeltine, Martin Mason Yosemite Valley, CA Hibbard, C.P Lisbon, NH Hoff, W.L La Grange, IN LeConte, Joseph Berkeley, CA Littleton View Co Littleton, NH Lovejoy (Edward) & Foster (Henry C.) Chicago, IL Marcy, Lorenzo J Philadelphia, PA Mason, Perry & Co Boston, MA Miller & Best (E.P.) Boston, MA Moulton, Joshua W. & John S. Salem, MA Moulton, John S . Salem, MA Myers & Smith Canton, 01-I Nesemann, Enno F.C Marysville, CA Ormsby, Elon Delamore Stockton, CA Parks, J.G Montreal, Canada Pittsburgh Daily News Pittsburgh, PA Rau, William Herman Philadelphia, PA Ropes, H. & Co New York, NY Seaver, C Boston, Grantville, and West Newton, MA Spooner, John Pitcher . Stockton, CA Surdam (Bernard G.) & White (Hawley C.) New York, NY Union View Co Rochester, NY Walker (Selah Clarence) & Fagersteen (Gustavus A. F.) Yosemite Valley, CA Wilson, Edward Livingston Philadelphia, PA Woods, Amos Marysville, CA Woodward, Charles Warren Rochester, NY Woodward & Albee (Henry C.) Rochester, NY Woodward & Lord (Jotham) Rochester, NY Anonymous Imprints American Scenery American Scenery: California Scenery American Scenery: Standard Series American Scenery: The Yosemite Valley, California American Scenery: Tourists Series American Views: Standard Series California Illustrated: New Series Diamond H New Diamond H Series New Educational Series Pacific Coast West From Omaha Stereo Views Stereoscopic Views Yosemite Valley, California GLACIER POINT, 3,700 feet, Yo Semite Valley, Cal. By If. Reilly. From PeirtlVof our series on Reillys life and work by Paul Hickman and Peter Palmquist.