Yosemite River Landscape

Landscape, Mountains, Landscape, Rivers, Supports

Dimensions

Image Dimensions: 20.1 x 13.0 cm glued on upper margin to primary mount
Support Dimensions: 20.8 x 13.8 cm

California-born Jesse T. (uomley) Banfield, (1877-1946) affiliated with the Oakland Salon Pictorialists, “started in photography by making landscapes with his sister Aetheline Banfield Deuel.”   He

…exhibited in various salons between 1910 and 1917, including the Seventh American Photographic Salon at the John Herron Art Institute; the Ninth American Photographic Salon - 1912-1913 at the Art Institute of Chicago; and the International Exhibition of the London Salon of Photography, Galleries of the Royal Society. (1.)

E.B. Auerbach wrote a lengthy profile: The Work of Jesse T. Banfield for the February, 1913 issue of Camera Craft magazine discussing Banfield’s transition from landscape work to the nude:

Mr. Banfield’s earlier efforts were confined to landscape work, a field in which he showed great feeling and appreciation of the subtle charm so uniformly lacking in the landscape work of the beginner. The soft-focus lenses that were introduced about that time appealed to him as tools that placed a new power in his hands, or at least allowed him to secure desired effects in a more direct way. and they were made an important part of his equipment. Turning to portraiture, as the beginner quite easily does, the same subtle charm was incorporated in his work. In this line, as in landscape, his skill and ability resulted in the production of many examples of a high order of pictorial merit. (pp. 53-54)

print details: recto: signed in black ink at lower right: J.T. Banfield.

print details: verso: adhesive remnants to upper margin of primary mount indicating loss of secondary mount at some point.

This landscape most likely shows either the Merced or Yosemite Rivers.

1. excerpt: Banfield biography: I Photo Central online resource accessed May, 2015