Fire Department, Clark & Sumner, Standard Petroleum Refinery, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania
c. 1865
Medium
stereoscopic albumen prints
Dimensions
image/sheet (each): 7.6 × 8 cm (3 × 3 1/8 in.) mount: 8.1 × 17 cm (3 3/16 × 6 11/16 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund
Accession Number
2017.93.7
Art Historical Context
Step into the gritty heart of America's industrial revolution with *Fire Department, Clark & Sumner Standard Petroleum Refinery, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania* (. 1865), a pair of stereoscopic albumen prints by Thomas H. Johnson. Captured just after the Civil War, these 3-by-3-inch images, mounted side-by-side for 3D viewing through a stereoscope, depict the fire brigade at a bustling oil refinery in Pittsburgh—a hub of the nascent petroleum industry sparked by Edwin Drake's 1859 oil strike nearby. Stereographs like these were a 19th-century sensation, transforming flat photos into immersive depth,...
About the Artist
Thomas H. Johnson · 1860–1870
Thomas H. Johnson was an American artist active in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Working during a period of considerable vitality in American art — when landscape painting, genre scenes, and printmaking were all flourishing — Johnson contributed to a visual culture that was expanding rapidly alongside the nation itself. The specifics of Johnson's training are not fully documented, th...