Carleton E. Watkins 1829-1916

a plate from the album Photographs of the Columbia River and Oregon (San Francisco: C. E. Watkins, 1872), mammoth-plate albumen print, on the original two-toned folio mount, titled in an unidentified contemporary calligraphic hand in ink and numbered '23' in an unidentified modern hand in pencil on the mount, matted, framed, two San Francisco Museum of Modern Art exhibition labels on the reverse, circa 1867

The University Club, New York

Swann Galleries, New York, 10 May 1979

Acquired by Margaret W. Weston from the above

Carmel, The Friends of Photography, Carleton E. Watkins: Photographs of the Columbia River and Oregon, February - March 1980

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Carleton Watkins: The Art of Perception, May - September 1999; and traveling to:

New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 1999 - January 2000

Washington, D. C., National Gallery of Art, February - April 2000

Monterey Museum of Art, Passion and Precision: Photographs from the Collection of Margaret W. Weston, January - April 2003

This print:

James Alinder, Carleton E. Watkins: Photographs of the Columbia River and Oregon (The Friends of Photography in Association with the Weston Gallery, Carmel, 1979, in conjunction with the exhibition), pl. 23

Nickel, Douglas R., Carleton Watkins: The Art of Perception (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1999, in conjunction with the exhibition), pl. 50

Passion and Precision: Photographs from the Collection of Margaret W. Weston (Monterey Museum of Art, 2003, in conjunction with the exhibition), p. 57

'The Garrison, Columbia River,' is the only print kept by Maggi Weston for her private collection from an album of 51 Carleton Watkins photographs purchased in a celebrated New York auction in 1979.  The album, entitled Photographs of the Columbia River and Oregon, along with a companion Watkins album of Photographs of the Pacific Coast, was discovered by Swann Galleries during an appraisal of the library of New York's University Club.  Offered at auction at Swann on 10 May 1979, the Columbia River and Oregon brought $100,000, and Photographs of the Pacific Coast, $98,000.  In 1979, these were by far the two most expensive lots that had ever been sold in a photographs auction, and the sale has taken its place in the chronicles of legendary moments in the photographs trade.  Maggi Weston, with financial backing from Leonard and Marjorie Vernon and a group of their family and friends, was the winning bidder of the Columbia River album; Jeffrey Fraenkel and George Rinhart were the successful purchasers of Photographs of the Pacific Coast, which comprised the inaugural show of Fraenkel's new San Francisco gallery later that year.

After attempts to find an institutional or private buyer for the Columbia River album met with no success, the Weston Gallery was determined that the contents of the album would be exhibited and then preserved in some way, in their entirety, before the photographs were dispersed.  To that end, the Weston Gallery, in collaboration with The Friends of Photography, the organization founded by Ansel Adams in 1967, held a special exhibition of the Columbia River photographs at The Friends' premises in Carmel.  In conjunction with this exhibition, the Weston Gallery and The Friends published the volume Carleton E. Watkins: Photographs of the Columbia River and Oregon, which reproduced every photograph in the album, in their original sequence.  After the exhibition, photographs from the album were offered on an individual basis through the Weston Gallery, Carmel.  One of the album’s photographs, 'Cape Horn near Celilo,' sold by Maggi Weston to the 7-Eleven Corporation in the 1980s, made auction history of its own when it was offered in these rooms in April 2000.  It soared past its $20,000 to $30,000 estimate to $236,750, establishing a new level for not only Watkins, but also 19^th-century American photographs on paper.

'The Garrison, Columbia River,' is one of a series of photographs taken along Oregon's Columbia River in 1867.  In his essay for The Friends of Photography volume, David Featherstone traces Watkins's Oregon itinerary, and points outs that photographs from the trip may well have been commissioned by the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, whose steamboats regularly traveled the routes recorded in Watkins's photographs.  'The Garrison, Columbia River,' shows Watkins's absolute gift for picture-making, a log cabin anchoring the foreground, the Columbia River flowing in the middle distance, and the landmark Castle Rock rising on the horizon.  In Carleton E. Watkins: Photographer of the American West, the late Peter Palmquist, dean of Watkins studies, lists in his census of Watkins materials only three copies of the Columbia River album: the 51-plate album sold at Swann Galleries, now dispersed, from which the present photograph was taken; another 51-plate album in the Stanford University Library; and a 35-plate album in the Oregon State Library, Salem.  As of this writing, only four prints of the present image have been located: the print offered here; the prints in the two above-mentioned institutional collections; and a print in a private collection.