Tag: Whitney (Edward T.)

Wikipedia says: Edward Tompkins Whitney (1820–1893) In 1844, Whitney, born in New York City, quit the jewelry business to learn the daguerreotype process from Matrin M. Lawrence, before moving to Rochester New York in 1846 as an operator in the studio of Thomas Mercer. 1850 J. W. Black of Boston instructed Whitney in the “new art” of wet-plate collodion photography. Whitney opened his own “Skylight Gallery” in Rochester in 1851, and made regular trips to the New York City studios of Matthew Brady and Jeremiah Gurney in order to study the latest improvements in photography. In 1959, after recovering from the ill effects of cyanide poisoning, Whitney sold his Rochester business and moved to New York City, opening a gallery at 585 Broadway with Andrew W. Paradise, Mathew Brady’s “right-hand man.” Nevertheless, during the winter of 1861–62, Brady would commission Whitney to take “views of the fortifications around Washington and places of interest for the Government.” These would include scenes in and around Arlington, Falls Church and Alexandria, VA. In March 1862, Brady again dispatched Whitney and Brady operator, David Woodbury, to take photographs on the Bull Run battlefield. Whitney also relates that he took views at Yorktown, Williamsburg, White House, Gaines’ Mill, and Westover and Berkeley Landings during McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign. Whitney personally appears in an unusually large number of photographs from 1861 to 1863, and while there is no question that Whitney took photographs for Brady, alas, there are no wartime views specifically ascribed to him. Whitney’s last documented self-portrait (Anthony, Views in Washington City, 2733) is on March 27, 1863 during which time he documented the Southern Plains Indian Delegation inside the White House’s well lit conservatory (2734, 2735). In addition to Anthony’s post-war views with back label attributions to Whitney & Paradise, Whitney is also listed as working with a Mr. Beckwith in Norwalk, Connecticut. from 1865 to 1871, and then alone in Norwalk from 1873 to 1880. Lastly he can be placed in Wilton, Connecticut from 1879 to 1886.