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Atlas to Accompany the Monograph on the Tertiary History of the Grand Canon District.
Washington, D.C.: Department of the Interior, United States Geological Survey, 1882. Julius Bien & Co. Lith. New York. Folio (20.5” x 18”), original gilt cloth, rebacked with original spine laid down. [4], 22 double-page plates, 10 tinted and chromolithographic views, 12 chromolithographic maps. CONDITION: Very good, one dampstain at right margin of text block affecting first few leaves, no effect on plates, some tissue guards creased. Dutton’s spectacular atlas of the Grand Canyon, published in connection with the Powell Geological Survey, with a fine series of chromolithographic maps and views after artists Thomas Moran and William Henry Holmes. The first publication of the United States Geological Survey, this atlas stands as one of the most remarkable publications resulting from any western survey. Arising from Dutton’s time on John Powell’s survey of the Grand Canyon in 1879–81, the atlas and accompanying monograph were projects Dutton had inherited from Powell, who had intended to write it years before. Proposed as part of a series to include works by Powell and Grove K. Gilbert, the greatest American geologist of the nineteenth century, Dutton’s were the only publications to come to fruition. While Dutton’s text elegantly described the geological history of the Canyon region, paying minute attention to the volcanic activity which he specialized in, the atlas, containing lithographic and wood-engraved views after the drawings of William H. Holmes and Thomas Moran, marked a clear break from European-style depictions of the Canyon. Where previous illustrations of the Canyon had favored green tones and gray hues, “Holmes’s sketches and panoramas, on the other hand, are all but photographic in their depiction of reality…The flavor of the country is squeezed out, and the image of the Colorado Plateau and its marvelous chasm are corrected forever in science and literature…Holmes had seen the country with the eyes of an artist and a scientist” (Anderson). The plates after Holmes include a “View of the Temples and Towers of the Virgen,” a “view looking eastward from Vulcan’s Throne disclosing the Inner Gorge of the Grand Cañon, the great esplanade, and the upper or outer walls on either hand,” “the Panorama from Point Sublime in the Kaibab,” among others, while the lithograph after Thomas Moran depicts “the Transept…lateral gorge opening into one of the branches of the Bright Angel Amphitheatre in the Kaibab.” Editor and compiler of the atlas Clarence Edward Dutton (1841–1912), the son of a Connecticut-based boot salesman, was a Yale University graduate and Civil War Captain. After the war, in the 1870s, Dutton became friends with Grand Canyon explorer John Wessley Powell, the two bonding over their shared interests in artillery and geology. In 1875, the War Department attached Captain Dutton to Powell’s survey, during which he would explore and map the volcanic activity in the Kaibab and North Rim regions of the Canyon from 1879–1881. Opting for descriptive illustrations instead of purely artistic renditions, Dutton’s decision to enlist Thomas Moran and William Henry Holmes as the Canyon’s artists resulted in the most accurate depictions of the region up to that time. Artist William Henry Holmes (1846–1933) was, among other things, an anthropologist, archaeologist, draftsman, and museum director, who began his illustration practice by depicting the fossils and specimens for Fielding B. Meek’s paleontological reports from 1871. From 1872–1879, while serving on the Hayden expedition, he helped to illustrate views of Yellowstone, the Mount of the Holy Cross in Colorado, and other Western sites. After providing highly detailed drawings and watercolors of the Grand Canyon region for Dutton in 1882, Holmes taught anthropology at the University of Chicago and directed the Bureau of American Ethnography and National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. Julius Bien (1826–1909) is best known for his elephant chromolithographic folio edition of Audubon’s Birds of America, printed between 1858 and 1862. Last notes that “in the 1860s Bien began to specialize in the production of lithographed maps and charts. For the rest of the century, he produced maps for nearly all the major American geographical and geological publications and for the decennial census reports. Bien developed new coloring and shading techniques, was an early user of photolithography, and was instrumental in establishing scientific standards for American cartography” (Last). Bien’s innovations in color printing provided the lithographers replicating Moran and Holmes with the ability to render the most accurate views of the Canyon at the time, while also helping Dutton to distinguish geological features on his maps. REFERENCES: “William Henry Holmes” at Smithsonian Institute for American Art online; Anderson, Robert Stewart. Anderson, Robert Stewart. “A Biography of Clarence Edward Dutton (1841-1912), 19th Century Geologist and Geographer,” (MA thesis, Stanford, 1977); Last, Jay. The Color Explosion (2005), pp. 36–37.
Item #8306
Price: $4,750.00
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