The Mother of the Forest From the Father of the Forest - Calavaras Grove
ca. 1878
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions
Image: 12.5 x 12.5 cm (4 15/16 x 4 15/16 in.), circular Album page: 24 x 25.1 cm (9 7/16 x 9 7/8 in.)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.556 (5)
Tags
Art Historical Context
Carleton E. Watkins’s “The Mother of the Forest From the Father of the Forest – Calaveras Grove” captures the majestic scale of California’s giant sequoias in a delicate circular albumen silver print made around 1878. Watkins, a pioneering photographer of the American West, traveled with cumbersome glass-plate cameras to document landscapes that few Eastern viewers had ever seen. His images helped shape public appreciation for these ancient trees and supported early conservation efforts. The circular format draws the eye inward, framing the towering trunks and dense forest canopy as a self-co...
About the Artist
Carleton E. Watkins · 1829–1916
Carleton E. Watkins (1829–1916), one of America's pioneering landscape photographers, was born on November 11, 1829, in Oneonta, New York, the eldest of eight children to carpenter John Watkins and innkeeper Julia. Drawn by the Gold Rush, he arrived in San Francisco in 1851 at age 22 alongside childhood friend Collis Huntington, who later became a railroad tycoon. Initially working as a carpenter ...