Discovering Carleton E. Watkins

My newly discovered artist today is 19^th century photographer, Carleton E. Watkins. Watkins was born in 1829 in upstate New York.  He eventually moved to California to live in the 1860’s. There he fell in love with the western landscape.

Carleton E. Watkins is most known for his conservatory work of Yosemite Valley in California and his contribution to the establishment of National Parks.  Watkins specialized in landscape photography and often experimented in the early years of photography with new equipment.

According to many accounts, during Watkins’ lifetime he experienced a small amount of success as a photographer.  He lost his studio in the San Francisco earth quake and was poor when he died in 1926.   In recent years a photograph among an album of 51 prints, entitled Photographs of the Columbia River and Oregon, was sold an auction for $100,000.  At that time, it was the most expensive property sold at an auction.