Standard Petroleum Refinery, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania
c. 1865
Medium
stereoscopic albumen prints
Dimensions
image/sheet (each): 7.8 × 7.9 cm (3 1/16 × 3 1/8 in.) mount: 8 × 17.1 cm (3 1/8 × 6 3/4 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund
Accession Number
2017.93.3
Art Historical Context
This striking stereoscopic photograph captures the Standard Petroleum Refinery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, around 1865. Created by photographer Thomas H. Johnson using albumen prints mounted for three-dimensional viewing, the image offers a rare glimpse into America’s rapidly expanding oil industry just six years after Edwin Drake’s famous well sparked the nation’s first petroleum boom. The stereoscopic format was immensely popular in the mid-nineteenth century, allowing viewers to experience distant industrial sites with remarkable depth and realism when seen through a viewer. Johnson’s pre...
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...