571
westward to meet the Union Pacifi c. Gardner published
these photographs in Across the Continent on the Kansas
Pacifi c Railroad in Washington in 1868. From 1867 to
1880 Gardner photographed Indian delegates to Con-
gress for the Offi ce of Indian Affairs, and in 1873, he
made a rogues’ gallery for the Washington police.
Later in his life, Gardner devoted himself to philan-
thropic work for the Washington Benefi cial Endowment
Association and the Masonic Mutual Relief Organiza-
tion (Washington, D.C.) for which he served as Secre-
tary. Gardner died on 12 December 1882, but his work
remains in collections at the National Archives, Library
of Congress, the George Eastman House, and the New
York Historical Society in the United States.
Francine Weiss
Biography
Alexander Gardner was born October 17, 1821, in
Paisley, Scotland, but raised in Glasgow, where, as a
teenager he apprenticed with a jeweler until he was in his
early twenties. With knowledge of chemistry, Gardner
experimented with photography and, after establishing
an Owenite utopian community in Iowa in 1850, he
settled in New York with his family in 1856 fi nding
himself quickly hired by the photographer-entrepreneur
Mathew Brady as the manager for Brady’s Washington
gallery. In the years before and during the Civil War,
Gardner made his greatest contributions to photography
with his many portraits of Lincoln, the last of which was
taken in 1865 fi ve days before Lincoln’s assassination,
and with his Civil War photographs, taken while work-
ing for Brady. In 1863, he left Brady to open his own
gallery in Washington D.C., but his work as a Union
photographer for Brady and as an independent photog-
rapher led to his publication in 1866 of a two-volume
set of a hundred Civil War photographs, accompanied
by text and captions, called Gardner’s Sketchbook
of the War. Containing images by Gardner and other
Civil War photographers, these volumes documentedGardner, Alexander. Abraham Lincoln
and His Son Thomas (Tad).
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© The J. Paul Getty Museum.