Yo-Semite Valley California by Gustavus Fagersteen
No place of publication: c. 1880s. Original gilt-lettered blue cloth portfolio (one ribbon tie lacking),
13 x 11 inches, enclosing nineteen albumen print photographs on original mounts, seventeen of which are titled in pencil in a 19th c. hand on verso, and one of which has a printed title on recto and verso (image size varies; approx. 9 x 7 inches). [With]: Great Reduction in Prices. Gustav Fagersteen, for Seven Summers in Yo Semite Valley [trade card], formerly mounted inside the rear cover of the portfolio; Currey & Kruska 109. The trade card is known to have been printed on both sides, listing "Table of Altitudes at Yo Semite Valley;" but the verso of the present example, if ever printed at all, was lost in the course of removing it from the rear panel and is present in facsimile only].
Berlin-born Gustavus Fagersteen was active in Texas by 1858; Louisiana by 1863, and various locations in California by 1871. He was working in Yosemite Valley as early as 1876, and in 1880 was granted permission to operate a studio in the upper Valley by the Yosemite Commissioners, where he posed tourists in front of Yosemite backgrounds and sold landscape views of the Valley, as the text of his trade card notes. A specialty of his was the copying and retouching of faded and damaged photographs; and in fact, two of the present views, "Looking op [sic.] the Valley from South Dome" and "Comming [sic.] Storm" exhibit dramatic solar rays added by the artist in the printing process. The linguistic idiosyncracies, in conjunction with Fagersteen's German heritage, suggest the possibility that the captions are in the photographer's own handwriting.
Present images include:
El Capitan 3300 ft
Three Brothers 3830 ft
Looking op [sic.] the Valley from South Dome
Grizzly Giant 101 ft Circumference
Glacier Point Rock 3200 ft
Wawona Mariposa Grove [possibly depicting the photographer's wagon from the
rear]
Yosemite fall Hotel
Vernal Fall 400 ft
Cathedral Rock 2660 ft
Yosemite Fall 2634 ft
Mirror Lake and Mount Watkins 3900 ft
The Glacier Mount Layel [sic.]
Union point 2500
Comming [sic.] Storm
Inspiration Point
The Vernal and Nevada falls from Glacier Point [vertical view]
[Untitled]
Vernal and Nevada Falls from Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley, Cal.
[horizontal; the only one of these views with a printed title]
North Dome
The images are generally in fine unfaded condition; a few tiny chips at corners of mounts. In a custom quarter-leather clamshell box.
Early Yosemite resident Pinkie Ross visited Fagersteen as he lay dying in the German Hospital in San Francisco. She recalled that his personal effects were subsequently auctioned off and his studio lay empty, "except for a large pile of precious glass negatives which were smashed by children at play" (typescript, Yosemite National Park Research Library; quoted in Palmquist, Pioneer Photographers from the Mississippi to the Continental Divide: A Biographical Dictionary (Stanford University Press, 2005).
Fagersteen's work is not frequently encountered in the marketplace. The wanton destruction of his life's work upon his demise must be a significant contributor to its scarcity.
[Book #31238P]
Price: $35,000.00