Sunday, April 2, 2017

Photographs of 19th-century Trees

William Henry Fox Talbot
Oak Tree in Winter
ca. 1842-43
salted-paper print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

John Jabez Edwin Mayall
Crystal Palace Hall with Large Tree, London
1851
daguerreotype
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

"There is a great deal of excitement over Monsieur Daguerre's invention, and nothing is more amusing than the explanations of this  marvel that are offered in all seriousness by our salon savants.  Monsieur Daguerre can rest easy, however, for no one is going to steal his secret. Truly, it is an admirable discovery, but we understand nothing at all about it; there has been too much explanation." 

 Madame de Girardin, writing under the pseudonym 'vicomte de Launais' in the ephemeral journal, Lettre parisienne, 1839  quoted in The Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin

B.B. Turner
Hedgerow Trees, Clerkenleap
1852
salted-paper print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

W.H. Nicholl
Windsor Park
1854
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Roger Fenton
The Dark Walk, Stonyhurst
ca. 1856-58
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Roger Fenton
Study of Tree
ca. 1856-58
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Mrs. Jane St John
Tomb of Caius Cestius, Rome
ca. 1856-59
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Édouard Baldus
Temple of Diana at Nîmes
ca. 1861
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

"Some trees were associated with particular divinities for special reasons, like the mantic (oracular) oak of Zeus at Dodona; Athena's olive, which symbolized the source of Athens' prosperity; or the laurel of Apollo with its apotropaic and purifying properties. The palm was sacred to Leto on Delos; on Laconian Boeae, Artemis Soteira was worshipped in the form of a myrtle, and she had a cult as Kedreatis in Arcadian Orchomenus. In popular belief trees housed some kind of 'soul'  spirits of the woods and mountains lived in them. Some were revered for their age. The nymphs haunted sacred groves, which were the first natural sanctuaries of the gods. Poseiden had a sacred grove at Onchestus in Boeotia, Athena on Phaeacia. At Curium on Cyprus the sanctuary of Apollo Hylates arose from a sacred grove. A sacred fig-tree stood in the Roman Forum near the sanctuary of Rumina the goddess of nurture or nursing."

 Oxford Classical Dictionary 

C.L. Weed
Big Tree in Mariposa Grove
ca. 1860-64
hand-colored albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Samuel Bourne
Great Deodar, Simla
1863
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

James Sinclair and William Bainbridge
Great Beech on Manor Hill
1864
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

James Sinclair and William Bainbridge
Queen Anne's Oak
1864
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Anonymous photographer
Old Chestnut Tree  Dedham, Massachusetts
ca. 1865
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Anonymous photographer
The Park
ca. 1865
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Vernon Heath
Beech Trees, Inverary
1871
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

"Many Mediterranean lands were forested in ancient times, but these timber stands were drastically reduced by human exploitation and by the grazing of animals, especially goats. The Mediterranean climate is capable of sustaining forests so long as they are intact, but once the trees are cut, the combination of marginal rainfall and grazing animals makes forest regeneration difficult, if not impossible. In general the history of timber supplies is one of gradual depletion, with little effort in antiquity to replant harvested lands. Only in those areas of continental rainfall conditions which lie at some distance from dense human settlement (e.g. the mountains of Macedonia) have forests survived into modern times. Thus lacking much apparent physical correlation between modern scrubland and ancient forests, we are dependent upon references in the ancient authors for a description of the location and abundance of ancient timberland."

 Oxford Classical Dictionary