John Plumbe Jr.
1846
Christopher Columbus

Plumbeotype
6 x 10 in.
 
Archive Farms
The Patrick Montgomery Collection, Object No. 2011.061
 
Notes: This Plumbeotype appeared in an early, perhaps November, Issue of a 1846 magazine called, " THE POPULAR MAGAZINE ", a journal of Art and Literature, published in Philadelphia by the National Publishing Company, and edited by A.J.H. Duganne. Quoting an early newspaper, the Boston Star Spangled Banner, " the ' POPULAR MAGAZINE ' …. is illustrated with engravings executed by a newly invented process called the Plumbeotype. Plumbe, the Daguerreotypist, being the inventor ". " By the Plumbeotype process, in the first place, the great desideratum is attained of the production of a facsimile of a Daguerreotype, which is itself a perfect copy of nature. This insures, at once, the most truthful likeness, the most natural expression - in one word, the vraisemblance of the original. In the same manner as the copy of the autograph letter is a true shadow of the real one, each curve, line, and even blot, being preserved, so is every line and expression in the human face stamped on the silver-plate of the Daguerreotype, and there transferred to the paper, by the Plumbeotype process ".
 
Short on funds and waiting to receive a commission from the United States Congress to survey the route for a transcontinental railroad, an idea which he is credited with originating, civil engineer John Plumbe, Jr., took up photography in 1840 after seeing the work of an itinerant daguerreotypist in Washington, D.C. A Welshman by birth, Plumbe opened a gallery in Boston the following year. He eventually maintained galleries in thirteen cities, making his name recognizable in numerous cities across the country. Plumbe opened his Washington, D.C., gallery in 1844, the first in the nation's capital. By the time he established the National Plumbeotype Gallery of engraved and lithographic reproductions of his own images in 1846, Plumbe had been dubbed "the American Daguerre" by the press. In 1847 Plumbe found himself in financial trouble and he sold his business to his employees. Two years later he gave up photography and retired to Dubuque, Iowa, where he met an untimely end by cutting his own throat. (Getty Museum)
 
LL/112626