Prior to photography, portraits were painted. A first connection to Hawai‘i in this was through the son of Jedidiah Morse (Jedidiah was an abolitionist New England preacher who some consider “the father of American geography” – he compiled and published the first American geography book).
His son Samuel showed enough artistic promise for Jedidiah to send Samuel abroad to study painting after he graduated from Yale University in 1810.
Painting provided Samuel with pocket money to help pay his term bills at Yale. He became one of the small handful of important American painters in his generation, and many famous depictions of notable Americans are his work.
The portrait of Noah Webster at the front of many Webster dictionaries is his, as are the most familiar portraits of Benjamin Silliman, Eli Whitney, and General Lafayette. (Fisher)
Prior to the departure of the first missionaries to Hawai‘i, a portrait of each of the company had been painted by Samuel Morse; engravings from these paintings of the four native “helpers” were later published as fund-raisers for the Sandwich Islands Mission and thereby offer a glimpse of the “Owhyhean Youths” on the eve of their Grand Experiment. (Bell)
The portrait of Noah Webster at the front of many Webster dictionaries is his, as are the most familiar portraits of Benjamin Silliman, Eli Whitney, and General Lafayette. (Fisher)
Morse showed great promise as a painter, but he offered Americans grand paintings with historical themes, when all his paying patrons really wanted were portraits of themselves. Eventually Morse accepted many portrait commissions, but even they did not bring the steady income he needed to support himself and his family.
Oh, one more thing about Samuel Morse, while he did not invent the telegraph, he made key improvements to its design, and his work would transform communications worldwide. First invented in 1774, the telegraph was a bulky and impractical machine that was designed to transmit over twenty-six electrical wires. Morse reduced that unwieldy bundle of wires into a single one.
Along with the single-wire telegraph, Morse developed his “Morse” code. He would refine it to employ a short signal (the dot) and a long one (the dash) in combinations to spell out messages.
Morse the artist also became known as “the Father of American photography.” He was one of the first in the US to experiment with a camera, and he trained many of the nation’s earliest photographers. (Fisher)
While doing art and developing code, Morse was also deeply involved in trying to make a go of his newfound vocation as a daguerreotypist. Morse enthusiastically embraced this new technology and became one of the first to practice photography in America. (LOC)
Daguerreotype was the first successful form of photography; it was named for Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre of France, who invented the technique in collaboration with Nicéphore Niépce in the 1830s.
Daguerre and Niépce found that if a copper plate coated with silver iodide was exposed to light in a camera, then fumed with mercury vapour and fixed (made permanent) by a solution of common salt, a permanent image would be formed. (Britannica)
The daguerreian era in Hawai’i began in the summer of 1845 when Theophilus Metcalf, an engineer and French scholar living in Honolulu, advertised that he was prepared to ‘take likenesses by the daguerreotype’.
The first surviving portraits, however, were made in January 1847, when an artist who called himself Senor Lebleu arrived from Peru and set up a studio.
Daguerreians continued to arrive and practice their art until approximately 1860. During this period there were almost a dozen artists working in the islands, for periods varying from one month to several years.
The most prolific Hawai‘i daguerreian whose work can be fairly well documented was Hugo Stangenwald (1829–99). He operated a studio in Honolulu from 1853 to 1858.
Dr. Hugo Stangenwald, the “student revolutionist, Austrian émigré, able practicing physician, and recognized early-day daguerreotype artist,” left Austria in March 1845. After living in California, he arrived in Honolulu in 1853. He married the former Mary Dimond in 1854. (HABS)
He opened a shop in late-1854 in a one-story frame structure on the site of the present Stangenwald building. His advertisement was well-known: “To send to them that precious boon, And have your picture taken soon, And quick their weeping eyes they’ll wipe To smile upon your daguerreotype.” (HABS)
His competitor for a year and a half (from 1855 to 1856) was Benajah Jay Antrim. Antrim left a memoir that, in a somewhat rambling and self-promoting fashion, recorded his success in the art in the Hawaiian Islands. (Davis & Forbes)
Before heading West, Antrim was a professional maker of mathematical instruments in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the 1830s he apprenticed under Edmund Draper. (Complete Surveyor)
Antrim was one of the forty men of the Camargo Company who went to California via Mexico on January 1849, after the successful termination of the War with Mexico. From 1852 to 1854 Antrim was noted in Sierra County, California.
From 1855 to 1856 he operated in Honolulu, Hawaii. He operated under his own name, B. Jay Antrim, as well as Role Lane Gallery (based on its location on Rose Lane) and Excelsior Gallery. (Polynesian, Nov 17, 1855)
He ran an advertisement noting, “Prices Reduced at the Excelsior Gallery, located on Rose Lane, east side of King-street opposite the Bethel Church. Thankful for past favors, the undersigned takes this method of soliciting for a limited time, the patronage of the citizens and visitors of Honolulu …”
“… assuring them that strict application has been made to every new feature of the Art, calculated to finish first class Portraits, Miniatures, and Views for all who may desire them, by the latest and most satisfactory mode of operating in the United States.”
“Gallery open from 8 AM to 4 PM. Cloudy weather no detriment. Call and examine the specimens of Rose Lane Gallery. B Jay Antrim” (Polynesian, Dec 22, 1855)
Then Antrim announced a change in his business, “To the Citizens of Honolulu. This is to inform the citizens Honolulu, that Mr. Benson, will continue the Daguerrean Art on Rose Lane, after April 14th, 1856. We would return our sincere thanks to our patrons, and recommend Mr. B, as worthy of their patronage. B. Jay Antrim” (Polynesian, April 5 & 12, 1856)
Antrim went back to California and set up shop there; he advertised, “Three Pictures for $3.00! B. Jay Antrim & Co would respectfully intimate to the residents of North San Juan and vicinity their intention of closing their Photographic operations in this town in a short time.”
“Hence all persons who may be desirous of securing a cheap and elegant picture for transmission to their friends in the Atlantic States, will see the necessity of an early visit to their Gallery, adjoining the Sierra Nevada Hotel. They have just completed the necessary arrangements for taking the new style of Canvas Pictures!”
“These Pictures possess a soft and elegant tone, and can be mailed with little additional postage. North San Juan, Oct. 1.” (Hydraulic Press, Oct 16, 1858)
The newspaper reported, “Mr. Antrim, the Ambrotypist, is now prepared to take portraits on canvas, having so far perfected his invention that he is willing to make it public. These pictures have an exquisite softness of color, a fine, clear relief, and are protected from the injurious effects of moisture by a trans parent varnish of the artist’s own invention.”
“They can be rolled up as easily as velvet, and forwarded in letters a great distance without detriment. They can be taken as large as life – this is no fiction – and are as free from any blinding lustre as ordinary engravings.”
“Mr. Antrim is a man of great ingenuity. He has devoted much time and money to the perfection of this new style of sun-portraits, and offers them at such a low price that it is an object to every person to patronize him. His invention is destined to be talked about and to become popular.” (Hydraulic Press, Oct 2, 1958)
(Ambrotype images are taken upon fine plate glass, over which is placed a corresponding glass,—the two being cemented together, so that the picture is just as permanent as the glass on which it is taken. They are far superior, in many respects, to the best Daguerreotypes.) (Pioneer American Photographers)
