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VANCE, ROBERT H (1825–1876)
In 1849, gold was discovered in the workings of
Sutter’s Mill at Coloma, California, just ten years after
the announcements of the inventions of photography
in Europe. News of Daguerre’s process travelled to
America ahead of William Henry Fox Talbot’s paper-
based method; consequently, east coast practitioners
soon began to specialise in daguerreotypes.
Robert H. Vance, who was born in Maine and inher-
ited money from his father, learned about photography
as a young man while working in portrait studios in
New Hampshire and Boston. By February 1847, he had
his own gallery in Valparaiso, Chile, and later opened a
similar venture in Santiago. Much of Vance’s commis-
sioned work came from owners of the wealthy, silver
mines of Atacama Province, but circumstantial evidence
suggests he also documented landscapes for his own
satisfaction, then a rare practice among professionals.
By 1850, Vance was 25 years old and the California
gold rush was underway. He sold his South American
studios and moved to San Francisco to take advantage
of the commercial opportunities (of the gold rush). En
route to America, he stopped at Cuzco in the Peruvian
Andes, and one biographer (Abel Alexander of Buenos
Aires) believes this body of work represented Vance’s
best photography whilst in South America.
Within twelve months of his arrival in northern Cali-
fornia, Vance had opened portrait studios in Sacramento,
Marysville and San José, and eventually expanded his
interests to Nevada (Virginia City and Carson City), and
Hong Kong. Declaring Vance’s Sacramento location as
the “fi nest Daguerreotype and Photograph Gallery in
the world,” the San Francisco Daily Times described the
“magnifi cent chandeliers, lace curtains, orlet [bordered]
carpets, and the richest style of furniture.” There were
“eight elegantly fi nished reception rooms, and twelve op-
erating rooms [and] ladies sitting and toilet rooms, where
family parties may go, with a perfect assurance of privacy,
and the premises are so arranged that there are at least three
distinct galleries, each separate from the other.”
Vance was an expert practitioner of the daguerreo-
type process, but he advertised cartes-de-visite at his
First Premium Gallery in San Francisco, very soon
after they became popular in Europe. He also offered
colour portraits, which used the photograph as a guide
for an artist working via a solar camera, and marketed
Ambrotypes by emphasising superiority over his rivals,
because those “taken by me are upon thick glass, and
are atmospherically sealed, and will stand forever.”
But Vance lost money by dabbling in the stock market,
and sold his gallery in 1864. The following year, he
returned to New York, where he lived for eleven years
until a sudden death at the age of 51. He was buried in
Augusta, Maine.
In an appreciation in 1946, Ansel Adams noted that
“the photographers of earlier days were defi nitely una-
ware of being ‘artists.’ They worked as craftsmen, ... and
their comment was not concerned by confl icting infl u-
ences of manner and style.” Adams believed that Vance
was not only a superb craftsman, but that he had other
qualities—“careful thought and selection of viewpoint.”
That is, he combined technical ability with creativity.
Robert Vance excelled as an artist, but he must also
be remembered for the twelve-month undertaking he
began in 1850. Once settled in San Francisco, his en-
trepreneurial spirit reasoned that, beyond California,
people were eager to learn about the gold rush and that
he was well placed to provide a visual narrative of its
people and the places. Leaving his studios to be run by
managers, Vance secured over three hundred images
of life in California, which were dominated by themes
of the gold fi elds. He framed his work, arranged the
layout, published a catalogue and, in 1851, opened the
exhibition on Broadway, New York.
In the 8-page “Catalogue of daguerreotype panoramic
views of California,” Vance featured portraits of gold
miners and native Americans, photographs showing
aspects of gold prospecting, the gold mining camps
and pictorial landscapes. The important segments illus-
trated the popular locations—the Stanislaus River, the
Mokelumne Mines near Sonora, Sacramento, Nevada
City, Yuba City and Coloma in El Dorado County. He
included San Francisco—before the fi re of May 1851,
and afterwards. He also showed emerging styles of
architecture and “almost every variety of scenery,” said
the editor of Photographic Art Journal, in a review
which described the “three hundred daguerreotypes so
arranged that a circuit of several miles of scenery can
be seen at a glance.” Vance had displayed “an exquisite
taste for the sublime and beautiful.”
From the outset of his career, Vance had favoured a
large, whole-plate camera, although studios portraits
were generally taken on a smaller format. (A portrait of
Horatio G Finch in the Bancroft Library was taken on a
“mammoth” plate measuring 32cm × 27cm.) That Vance
was able to visit the mining camps of the gold fi elds and
return with processed whole-plate images of excellent
quality, speaks well for his mastery of the process.