Kate and Robert Johnson photograph album, ca. 1880

Summary

Creator:

Muybridge, Eadweard, 1830-1904

Abstract:

The Kate and Robert Johnson photograph album contains interior and exterior images of the Johnsons' homes and grounds in San Francisco, and Menlo Park, California, as well as portraits of the Johnsons, their family members, and friends photographed at these locations. The pictures, taken by Eadweard Muybridge circa 1880, also include examples of spirit photography.

Extent:

1 volume

Language:

English

Authors:

Collection processed by Meg Hixon, Jayne Ptolemy, Clayton Lewis, 2013, 2014. Biographical information on the Johnsons provided by Barbara Skryja. Encoded finding aid created by Louie Miller, 2016, and updated by Jakob Dopp, 2023

Background

Scope and Content:

The Kate and Robert Johnson photograph album (30 x 25 cm) contains 84 images of the Johnsons' homes on O'Farrell Street in San Francisco, California, and "Heartsease" near Menlo Park, California, taken by Eadweard Muybridge circa 1880. The album has a pebbled brown cover with a binder's ticket from Partridge & Cooper, 192 Fleet St. [London].

The first group of 42 images consists of exterior and interior views of their San Francisco mansion, including views of parlors, bedrooms, and children's rooms. A few individual portraits taken on the premises are included. Of particular note are several spirit photographs of Robert and Kate Johnson, both of whom were alive at the time (20, 21, 24, 29). The couple's art collection is often visible including the painting "Elaine" by Toby Rosenthal. Furniture and decorative arts objects appear and reappear in different rooms and positions in the carefully composed images. In one image (37), it is possibly the photographer Muybridge who appears in a mirror reflection. The section ends with a close portrait of Robert C. Johnson.

The remaining 42 photographs are scenes from the Johnsons' "Heartsease" estate near Menlo Park, California. While the San Francisco photographs focus primarily on room interiors, the Menlo Park photographs mostly show the grounds and surroundings. Two images include sporting activities: a girl riding a young pony (70) and a group of men and women playing croquet (60). A photographic title page image for this section includes Muybridge's pseudonym "Helios" (44). Also included is a portrait of one of Kate Johnson's numerous cats, her affinity for which was well-documented (43).

This album showcases Muybridge’s interest in urban architecture and landscape photography, his success in earning commissions from notable men and women, while also touching on San Francisco’s rapidly developing wealth. It highlights the Johnsons' ornate mansion, their expansive art collection, and features both their urban homestead and rural retreat simultaneously. Moreover, with portraits, staged "spirit" photographs, and landscape scenes placed alongside more traditional photographs of the Johnsons' homes, the album speaks to Muybridge’s multiple artistic talents and the nuances of the Johnson’s personalities.

Biographical / Historical:

Robert C. Johnson (1836-1889) and Kate Johnson (1832?-1893) were wealthy merchants, art collectors, and philanthropists in late-nineteenth-century San Francisco. Robert was born in Richmond, Virginia, on December 7th 1836 to George C. Johnson (1811-1872) and Rebecca B. (Allen) Johnson. George Johnson was a sea captain who emigrated from Norway to New York as a young man before journeying to San Francisco during the Gold Rush of 1849. In 1852 he established George C. Johnson & Company with partner George W. Gibbs and began trading in steel, iron, and hardware. George C. Johnson eventually served as a Consul, and later as Consul-General for the United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway from 1856 until his death in 1872.

Robert C. Johnson worked at his father’s firm, becoming a managing partner by 1860. He was active in the Chamber of Commerce and member of the Mercantile Library, the Occidental Masonic Lodge No. 22, and the San Francisco Art Association. He and Kate (Birdsall) Newton were married in 1867. Upon his father's death in 1872, Robert C. Johnson inherited his father's business.

Kate Birdsall was born circa 1833 in Norwich, New York to James Birdsall (1783-1856) and Rizpah (Steere) Birdsall. Kate’s father, a lawyer, served in the United States Congress from 1815 to 1817 and as a member of the New York State assembly in 1827. Kate began attending the Troy Female Seminary in 1849. Kate originally married William Newton in Genesee County, Michigan in 1855; they divorced in the fall of 1866, but not before they bore a daughter together, Jessie (d. 1873).

Kate's second marriage was to Robert C. Johnson. This, along with an inheritance of one quarter of George C. Johnson’s estate in 1872, made her independently wealthy.

The Johnsons built a large mansion on the corner of O’Farrell and Leavenworth Streets in San Francisco and moved there in 1874. Robert Johnson eventually sold his interests in the George C. Johnson & Co. to Gibbs and focused on his mining, insurance, and real estate ventures. He purchased the Buena Vista Viniculture Society property in Sonoma, California in 1879, where he subsequently built an elaborate estate. Kate Johnson separately purchased a home in Menlo Park in 1875 which was renamed "Heartsease."

Robert and Kate Johnson would later adopt a daughter, Rosalind, who died in her teens in 1890.

The Johnsons contributed financially to a variety of institutions in the Bay Area, including arts, educational, religious, and ethnic organizations as well as hospitals, and societies to aid women, children, and the elderly. Kate Johnson was known for philanthropy and in the late 1880s set aside one third of her personal estate (which was officially transferred after her will was signed on July 19 1892) to fund a free hospital for women and children to be called Mary's Help Hospital. A Catholic convert, she transferred the Heartease property to the Archdiocese of San Francisco in 1891 as a site for St. Patrick's Seminary.

Robert C. Johnson died in Paris, France on March 8, 1889, after a spell of ill health. Kate Johnson died at her Sonoma, California home in December 1893.

Eadweard Muybridge (born Edward James Muggeridge), a pioneer in instantaneous and sequential stop-motion photography, was born in Kingston upon Thames, England, on April 9, 1830. He emigrated from Great Britain to the United States in the 1850s, subsequently traveling back to England in 1861 to become an active photographer, then returning to work on the American Pacific Coast in 1867. He quickly became known for his landscape photographs of Yosemite Valley, published in "Scenery of Yosemite Valley" (1868). Under the sponsorship of politician, businessman, and race-horse owner Leland Stanford, Muybridge began experimenting with photographs capturing horses in motion in 1872. His groundbreaking sequential photographs of a trotting horse led to the publication of his 11-volume work "Animal Locomotion," and the invention of his zoopraxiscope, an innovative optical instrument that projected moving images from these photographs.

Muybridge was at the center of a sensational legal case in 1874 when he was tried for the murder of Major Harry Larkyns, his wife's lover, and acquitted on the grounds of justifiable homicide and temporary insanity.

Though most well-known for his photographic analysis of human and animal locomotion, Muybridge worked broadly as a professional photographer on the Pacific Coast, in Central America, and across the United States, often under the pseudonym Helios. Muybridge died on May 8, 1904, in England.

Muybridge’s work with the Johnsons was likely a result of his careful cultivation of business relationships with the San Francisco elite. Both Robert Johnson and Muybridge were members of the Mercantile Library, and Johnson was a trustee of the Buena Vista Vinicultural Society when Muybridge was hired to photograph the winery and vineyards in 1871. The O'Farrell Street home appears in Muybridge’s 1877 panoramic photograph of San Francisco, and the Johnsons are listed on its key that highlighted the residences of wealthy citizens.

Acquisition Information:

1991. F-53 .

Rules or Conventions:

Finding aid prepared using Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS)

Related

Additional Descriptive Data:

Related Materials

Eadweard Muybridge. Panoramic San Francisco, from California Street Hill, 1877. San Francisco: Thomas C. Russell, 1911.

The Clements Library has additional reference works and collection items related to the work of Eadweard Muybridge. Search the library's online catalog for more information.

The Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, has a similar album:

Eadweard Muybridge. Home (605 O'Farrell Street, San Francisco and Heartsease, Menlo Park), 1880.

Bibliography

Benson, Thomas I. "Gold, Salt Air, and Callouses," Norwegian-American Studies 24 (1970), 193-220.

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=B000482)

Braun, Marta. Eadweard Muybridge (London: Reaktion Books, 2010)

Brookman, Philip. Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change (Washington, D.C.: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 2010)

Colville's Directory for San Francisco commencing on Oct. 1856 (San Francisco: Samuel Colville, Collator and Publisher, 1856)

Fairbanks, Mary M. ed., Emma Willard and her Pupils: or, Fifty Years of Troy Female Seminary, 1822-1872 (New York: Mrs. R. Sage, 1898)

Harris, David. Eadweard Muybridge and the Photographic Panorama of San Francisco, 1850-1880 (Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1993)

Langley, Henry G., comp., The San Francisco Directory for the Year commencing March, 1872 (San Francisco: Henry G. Langley, 1872)

LeCount & Strong’s San Francisco City Directory for the Year 1854 (San Francisco: 1854)

McGinty, Brian. Strong Wine: The Life and Legend of Agoston Haraszthy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998)

Phelps, Alonzo, et al. Contemporary Biography of California’s Representative Men , vol. 2 (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft & Co., 1882)

San Francisco Bulletin, New York Times, San Francisco Call, Los Angeles Times, Sacramento Daily Union, Pacific Rural Press, Daily Alta California, via the California Digital Newspaper Collection, America’s Historical Newspapers, and Proquest

Skryja, Barbara and Gale White. Buena Vista Vineyard-Buena Vista Vinicultural Society. Sonoma, Sonoma County, California. (May 21, 1984 rev 1986) National Register of Historic Places Nomination. National Register #86001902 (National Park Service, July 24, 1986.)

Skryja, Barbara. Biographical notes on Robert and Kate Johnson, 2013. Clements Library Control File F-53.

Smith, James H. History of Chenango and Madison Counties, New York, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers (Syracuse: D. Mason, 1880)

Ward, J.P. Eadweard J. Muybridge: About the Artist. Museum of Modern Art, New York, N.Y. Oxford University Press, 2009. Web. 11 October 2013.

Subjects

Click on terms below to find any related finding aids on this site.

Subjects:

Photographs shelf.
Architecture, Victorian--California.
Dwellings--California--1880-1890.
Interior architecture--California.
Interiors--California--1880-1890.

Formats:

Albumen prints.
Architectural photographs.
Landscape photographs.
Photograph albums.
Portrait photographs.
Spirit photographs.

Names:

Johnson, Robert C., 1836-1889.
Johnson, Kate, 1832?-1893.
Muybridge, Eadweard, 1830-1904.

Places:

Menlo Park (Calif.)
San Francisco (Calif.)