The following commentary appeared on the index page for this photo: “Mr. Keene was born in New York in 1858, (1.) and commenced his career with the late John Broughman. A few years later he joined the company of the late J. H. Hackett, and afterwards played with Owens, Chanfrau, Mary Provost and others. He has also been associated with Booth, Davenport and Clara Morris. In 1880 he made his first appearance as a star, and has since travelled about the country playing Richard III., Hamlet, Cassius, Richelieu, Macbeth, etc.”

Thomas R. Eagleson (October 26, 1840 – June 1, 1898), better known by the stage name Thomas Wallace Keene, was an American theatre actor known for his Shakespearean roles which he performed throughout the United States.—Wikipedia (2026)

1. Contemporary biographies all state Keene’s birth year as 1840.

Baker Gallery Founder: Lorenzo Marvin Baker: 1834-1934

The following background and biography of Baker Art Gallery founder Lorenzo Baker is courtesy of Meibohm Fine Arts, East Aurora, N.Y.

Baker Art Gallery (American Photography Studio, 1863-1955) was a national and internationally recognized photography studio out of Columbus, OH and specialized in portrait and commercial photography, genre scenes and specialty art-photography. Some of their most famous clientele included Presidents McKinley, Hayes, Taft & Harding, as well as many prominent political leaders, military personnel, theatre personalities and other famous notables such as Annie Oakley, actress Grace Arnold and actor Robert Drociet among others.

Lorenzo Marvin Baker (American, 1834-1924) was the founder of the Baker Art Gallery and four generations of the Baker family ran the business until 1955. His son’s Duane Henry (American. 1859-1934) and Lorenzo N. (American, 1861-1906) were both photographers as well and helped run the family business. Duane was made partner in 1878 and was joined by the one of their principal photographers John Samuel Schneider (American, 1860-1926) who was made partner around 1886. Duane owned a third of the business as well as Schneider, and the youngest son Lorenzo N. was never made a partner. Lorenzo N. only worked for his father’s studio from 1880’s-1890 where he then opened his own business in Pique, (Miami County), OH.” (continues)—Baker Art Gallery: Meibohm Fine Arts (2026)

LORENZO M. BAKER. | BAKER’S ART GALLERY.

“One of the best known business institutions of Columbus is Baker’s Art Gallery, which has a more than national reputation.

This gallery was opened in 1863 by Lorenzo M. Baker. This gentleman was born on April 20, 1834, in Copenhagen, Lewis county, New York, his parents being Lorenzo Baker, a general merchant, and Emilia (Canfield) Baker, both of whom still reside in Copenhagen.

There were two others in the family, N. Duane Baker, who died in 1861, and Adeline Baker, now the wife of C. F. Smith, Mayor of Copenhagen. He received a common school education at Copenhagen, and clerked in a general store when at the age of 16 at Rome, New York. In 1854 he came to Columbus and took an official position at the State Penitentiary, retaining that up to 1862, when he was appointed postmaster at Camp Chase.

He opened a gallery (daguerreotype, in 1863- editor) on High Street, near Main, where he continued for 20 years, when he next moved to the Metropolitan Opera Block now the Eberly Block. This building was burned January 27, 1891, when Mr. Baker opened his present magnificent gallery on High Street, near State, where he has in association with him his son, Duane Henry Baker and John Samuel Schneider. He was married to Miss Samantha E. Nye, who has borne him four children, two sons and two daughters, Duane Henry Baker, Lorenzo N., Mary C. and Emilia C., all of whom are living with the exception of Emilia C. Mr. Baker is a member of the Masonic Order, and has long been a most valuable and highly esteemed member of the community.” (continues) —Franklin County-At The Beginning of the Twentieth Century, Historical Publishing Company, Columbus, OH, 1901, pp. 203-4

Sun & Shade: An Artistic Periodical

“Within the covers of Sun and Shade…We shall especially endeavor to encourage the artistic side of direct photography in all its phases,”—Ernest Edwards, president & publisher, 1889

In July, 1888, the first issue of Sun & Shade: A Photographic Record of Events, was published in New York City by The Photo-Gravure Company. Essentially a high-class art periodical, each issue featured eight or more beautiful hand-pulled photogravures as well as plates printed in photogelatine, (collotype) and halftone. These were collected within a stapled, folio-sized magazine issued monthly.  The subject matter included the work of leading amateur and professional photographers, as well as works of art—many from the galleries at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. The December issue—Christmas themed—featured a specially designed cover printed in green ink.  Success was swift. The first issue sold 1000 copies “in a fortnight”. (1.) Within the first year, Sun & Shade quickly increased circulation to 4000 copies a month. With a public demand for reprinting earlier issues, this success lead to a rebranding, after which, beginning with the September, 1889 issue, the magazine was renamed Sun & Shade: An Artistic Periodical. The final issue was March, 1896, when financial issues to the parent company, spurred by the eventual May, 1896 bankruptcy of the N.Y. Photo-Gravure Company, forced its closure.

Sun & Shade would become the ultimate statement of the many skills and inquisitive mind of Englishman Ernest Edwards. (1836-1903) Essentially his own printed passion project, the magazine was fueled by his ongoing love of photography in the field (issues featured many plates by him over the years) and a deeply scientific mind which pushed the advancement of the state of photo-mechanical reproduction and fine printing.

The son of a clergyman from Bloomsbury in London, he initially made a name for himself taking photographic portraits of eminent people in his Baker Street gallery. (Charles Darwin sat for him several times) His love of the outdoors also bore fruit and he became an accomplished alpine photographer. But his real interest centered around photo-mechanical reproduction. In 1869, he took out a patent in England for his own rudimentary collotype process called heliotype. In the Fall of 1872, he moved across the pond along with his wife Charlotte, and became superintendent of Boston’s Heliotype Printing Company after selling the American rights to American publisher James Ripley Osgood. (1836–1892) Edwards ran the Heliotype Printing Co. there until the end of 1884. The following year the James R. Osgood & Co. went bankrupt, although not a result of the heliotype division.

Growing restless in Boston, he then moved to New York City, where he established a new firm in March, 1885: The Photo-Gravure Company, (subsequently renamed The New York Photo-Gravure Company) with offices in Manhattan and a leased printing factory in Brooklyn. In 1887, his company received perhaps the one commission it’s best known for today: the printing of  781 collotypes, which Edwards called photogelatine plates, making up the monumental publication:

Animal Locomotion. An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements, 1872-1885, with the landmark sequenced motion study photographs taken by British photographer Eadweard Muybridge. 

Restructured in 1891 as the New York Photogravure Co., Ernest Edwards continued to advance the state of photo-mechanical printing during his final decade, with Sun & Shade publishing some of the earliest examples of his own invention by 1894: plates printed in a three-color process called chrome-gelatine, a variation of his heliotype process.

Quality Rather than Quantity

Even though it survived less than eight years in print, describing Sun & Shade in Ernest Edward’s own words is perhaps the best posterity for this important photographic periodical with an artistic heart. One year after its’ debut, he wrote the following, published in The Photographic Times for August 2, 1889:

“A year ago we commenced the publication of our novel venture in journalism Sun and Shade, a Picture Periodical without letterpress, almost as an experiment, with a modest list of less than fifty subscribers. To-day we are printing an edition of 4,000 copies monthly. A sufficiently convincing proof of the wisdom of our hope that there was room for us.

“In our rapid growth the wish has been indicated unmistakably for the higher grade of pictures, and of the higher class–always for quality rather than quantity. Following rather than leading such a wish, we feel that we make no mistake in marking the future career of the magazine to be rather that of an artistic periodical than a photographic record of events.

*Our efforts shall be directed in the future to make Sun and Shade an artistic periodical which shall be not only pleasing but educational in its broadest sense, Some of our plans may be briefly referred to.

“We shall reproduce the leading pictures in the great collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Within the covers of Sun and Shade will be found from time to time, reproductions of the works of American artists. We shall especially endeavor to encourage the artistic side of direct photography in all its phases, And we shall supplement these special features with examples of sculpture, architecture, and industrial art. If in the future we receive as hearty a response to our efforts as we have received in the past, our task will be indeed pleasant and our road to success a royal one.” (p. 394)

1. Notice: Sun & Shade: October, 1888. The August and September issues did not appear.