Finding Clarence

Carte de visite by an unidentified photographer. I recently added this Civil War era image to my collection because I was drawn to the uncommon subject matter: A man with thick sideburns leans into an easel as he touches his brush against an albumen print of a woman. The brushes, paints, and glass of liquid, spirits or water, indicate he is a colorist or retoucher adding highlights to the woman’s dress. Another print, of a gray-bearded man, leans against the wall, either drying or waiting for the artist’s touch. Below the desk upon which the easel sits is a large four-lens wet-plate camera used for making carte de visite portraits—those paper images about the size of a modern trading card that were the social media own the 1860s.

 

The print is mounted on card stock, consistent with cartes from this period. The square edges have been trimmed so that the images can be easily slid into the thick and unforgiving pages of a photo album without creasing the picture.

 

The back of the mount includes an inscription printed in modern pencil:

 

Clarence C. King

Gardner’s Studio

Wash, D.C.

Ex coll. Alfred R. Waud

 

So this is what we know from a physical examination of the image.

 

The previous owner of this image, or caretaker as I like to think, provided additional information. He is William L. Schaeffer, a man well known in 19th century photograph collecting circles. Over 700 extraordinary photographs from Willie’s collection are now part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

 

Willie shared the image’s provenance: From noted Civil War artist Alfred R. Waud, to collector and dealer George R. Rinhart, to New York City dealer of fine photographica Allen Weiner, and acquired by Willie about 1985. Willie had the image in his collection for 40 years before it came to me.

 

In my experience as a collector, it is rare to trace the history of a photograph from its creation to the present time.

 

Willie also included this descriptive information:

 

“An excellent and extremely rare vintage museum quality carte-de-visite of Clarence C. King, an employee in the Washington, D.C. studio of Alexander Gardner, at work coloring a huge photograph of the First Lady, Mary Todd Lincoln. There is a large four-tube wet-plate camera beneath the table at his feet. Unsigned but most likely photographed by Alexander Gardner or another operator in the studio. 1860s.”

 

Armed with Willie’s information, and what I had observed with my own eyes, I did what I always do with a new acquisition to my collection: I turned to research to validate it. I always go into these projects as a healthy skeptic. In this case, I went in with heightened skepticism because the identification was modern, not period. Modern identifications are the least trustworthy, based on a survey of researchers about IDs by my friend Dr. Kurt Luther at Virginia Tech. Kurt developed Civil War Photo Sleuth, a digital tool tat used face recognition, technology, and community to identify soldiers.

 

My skepticism was heightened a bit more because the photograph of the woman looked younger than images I’ve seen of Mary Todd Lincoln. It is not a pose that I recognize. Still, I did not discount it because the details of the face and clothing are hard to make out.

 

My first step was to find Clarence C. King. I immediately ran into trouble. Searches on Ancestry.com, Find A Grave and elsewhere turned up no leads. I did however find one man with a very similar name: Clarence Rivers King (1841-1901).

 

As I began to learn more about King, my confidence rose. A Yale graduate who associated with a group of artists, writers and architects who followed the intellectual British polymath James Ruskin, King became a geologist and explored the American West. Just after the Civil War, King persuaded the U.S. Congress to fund an 1867 survey that came to be known as the Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel, or the Fortieth Parallel Survey. King led the group as U.S. Geologist, and he hired photographer Timothy O’Sullivan, who had worked for Mathew Brady and Alexander Gardner during the late Civil War, to document the trip. The survey was extremely successful, leading to King’s 1872 book, “Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada.”

 

King’s history fits nicely with the inscription on the back of the mount. He hung out with artists, and Alfred Waud was an illustrator. The photographer he hired for the geological survey, Timothy O’Sullivan, had once worked for Gardner’s Studio. But two items gave me pause.

 

First, Why would King pose as a colorist? There was another important consideration:

 

Second, likenesses of the geologist Clarence Rivers King did not match the colorist believed to be Clarence C. King.

 

I had hit a dead end.

 

A few days later, I contacted Military Images Senior Editor Buck Zaidel about a project centered around wartime images of wounded soldiers and sailors. It will be the cover story of our Spring 2025 issue. As the conversation wrapped up, we swapped stories about our latest acquisitions—something we always do when we talk. When I mentioned this image, described it, and explained that my research had stalled, Buck surprised me by saying he had a copy of the same print and was quite sure that his version had a name on the back—and that the name was not King. Excited, I sent Buck a phone pic to make sure we were talking about the same image.

 

He responded with a phone pic of the front and back of his carte de visite. I was delighted to see it was in fact the same print, and thrilled to look upon the period signature in bold ink on the back: Clarence Eytinge—not Clarence C. King.

 

Thanks to Buck, I now had an airtight identification of our colorist! The uniqueness of his surname made researching his life relatively easy. Eytinge (1835-1900), one of a dozen children born in America to wealthy Dutch immigrants of the Jewish faith, hailed from an multitalented family that excelled in the arts.

 

Eytinge’s eldest brother, Henry St. Claire “Harry” Eytinge (1822-1902) acted on stage alongside the Booth family, Edward Forrest, Charlotte Cushman, and others. Another older brother, Charles Dennis Eytinge, became a Shakespearian scholar well known in New York City’s literary scene.

 

A cousin, Rosetta “Rose” Eytinge (1835-1911), one of the most popular American actors of the day, toured major cities. President Abraham Lincoln numbered among her legion of fans.

 

Eytinge followed another older brother, Sol Eytinge, Jr., in pursuit of a career as an artist. Sol became a staff artist at “Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper” and mentored a young up-and-coming artist named Thomas Nast. Sol also contributed to “Harper’s Weekly,” where be befriended the Waud brothers, Alfred and William. Sol illustrated books for prominent authors of the time, including Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, John Greenleaf Whittier, and others.

 

Eytinge and Sol worked together as lithographers in the 1850s. One of Eytinge’s early works, created in 1853 at age 18, is a lithograph of New York City’s Park Row, is in the collection of the Museum of the City of New York:

collections.mcny.org/CS.aspx?VP3=DamView&VBID=&PN...

 

The Eytinge brothers were also gamblers, according to fellow illustrator Thomas Butler Gunn (1826-1904): “Clarence Eytinge has followed in the track of more than one of his brothers and gets his living at the gaming table.”

 

Eytinge’s career path changed after the Civil War began. In 1862, Eytinge relocated to Washington, D.C., and joined the administration of President Abraham Lincoln as a clerk in William Henry Seward’s Department of State. In this position, according to a news report, he became “well known and appreciated for his gentlemanly character and scholarly attainments.”

 

Eytinge was of military age, but was exempted from service due to a physical disability according to a Washington, D.C., newspaper. The report did not note the nature of the disability.

 

While Eytinge clerked as the State Department, Lincoln signed into law An Act to Encourage Immigration. The act, signed into law on On July 4, 1864, defended the rights of immigrants and sought to facilitate lawful immigration, especially by skilled European workers to fill the void left by Union soldiers in the army or those who had died in its service. It marked the first federal immigration law in the country. Eytinge transferred to the new Immigration Bureau before the end of 1864.

 

A year layer, Eytinge became Secretary of the United States Legation at Lima, Peru. He served in this capacity until March 1867, when he resigned and returned to Washington and continued to work in the State Department until the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant took office on March 4, 1869. Thus ended Eytinge’s career in the arts of diplomacy.

 

Eytinge returned to New York City and opened a design business, which included decorating event spaces, such as an 1881 ball to commemorate the centennial of the Revolutionary War victory at Yorktown.

 

In the late 1890s, Eytinge’s health began to fail, and Brig. Gen. William Henry Seward, Jr., the youngest son of the secretary, found him a less stressful job with the Adams Express Company. He died in 1900 of kidney issues and was survived by his wife, Catherine, whom he had married in 1856.

 

Still unknown is who owned the camera and created the photograph. The body of evidence points to Alexander Gardner, a friend of brother Sol. But we cannot say with certainty that it is Gardner’s studio.

 

I encourage you to use this image for educational purposes only. However, please ask for permission.

 

Done