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Elisha Williams Baker
(1798-1873)
Daguerreotypist Elisha Williams Baker was born about 1798 in Warwick, Rhode Island. In his early adulthood he moved to Providence and began to work as a teacher and a preceptor. He entered into the production of daguerreotypes in the early 1840s, not long after the technique was introduced to the United States, and established a studio at Market Square.
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Francois Fauvel-Gouraud, advertising himself as a student of Louis Daguerre’s, brought the technique to Providence in spring 1840. Gourard encouraged others to take up the new art form, and by 1843 (at the latest), there were at least two daguerreotype studios in Providence. One of these studios, at 9 Market Square, belonged to Baker. By 1850 there were seven listings under Daguerreotype Miniatures in the city directory (In comparison, the nearby cities of Pawtucket, Woonsocket, and Fall River had no daguerreotypists, and Newport had just one or two early in the 1840s). Americans who could never have paid for painted portraits were able to purchase daguerreotype portraits at very reasonable prices. Their family likenesses could now rest in frames above the mantelpiece too—the likeness was, if anything, more accurate than that proffered by a portraitist. And like an original painting, each daguerreotype was unique; there was no way to make additional prints.
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Quickly though, daguerreotyping shrunk to a niche business for a handful of artists who remained dedicated to the technique. By 1852, Baker was no longer listed as a daguerreotypist and few other Providence daguerreotypists survived the 1850s.
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Erik Christiansen, PhD, Rhode Island College
Gallery
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Elisha Williams Baker (1798-1873)
Daguerreotypist Elisha Williams Baker was born about 1798 in Warwick, Rhode Island. In his early adulthood he moved to Providence and began to work as a teacher and a preceptor. On May 21, 1829, Baker married Harriet Owen Sheldon (born 1807) of Providence, and the couple had two children, a son Daniel S. Baker and a daughter Harriet S. Baker (Mrs. Henry B. Olmstead). Remembering Elisha Baker, a former pupil described him as an “unpopular teacher” and an unfriendly man who pleased no one during his tenure as principal of Providence’s first public school located near the intersection of Pine and Claverick Streets. However, relying on the recollections of a single individual is problematic, to say the least, and all that can be said with certainty is that Baker continued to work as an educator through the 1830s: Providence directories of that decade list him as preceptor at the 2nd District Public School or the Meeting School. He entered into the production of daguerreotypes in the early 1840s, not long after the technique was introduced to the United States, and established a studio at Market Square.
About a decade before Baker’s birth in Warwick, Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre was born near Paris, France. By the 1830s, Daguerre’s experiments with capturing images had led him to a method of treating sheets of copper with iodine, which rendered them light-sensitive, and then using a camera to expose the sheets. Vapors of heated mercury developed the image while it was enclosed in a box. Daguerre and another man, Nicéphore Niépce, published the process on August 19, 1839, and the technique that would be known as daguerreotyping quickly spread around the world.
Francois Fauvel-Gouraud, advertising himself as a student of Daguerre’s, brought the technique to Providence in spring 1840. When Gourard demonstrated daguerreotypes, he displayed landscapes and images of buildings. He raffled off a cityscape as an incentive to attend his final lecture. Gourard encouraged others to take up the new art form, and by 1843 (at the latest), there were at least two daguerreotype studios in Providence. One of these studios, at 9 Market Square, belonged to then 45-year-old Baker. The second, named Bennet & Daboll and located at “Wash Row,”may have opened as early as 1841. By 1847, at least five other daguerreotypists were operating in Providence, and by 1850 there were seven listings under Daguerreotype Miniatures in the city directory (In comparison, the nearby cities of Pawtucket, Woonsocket, and Fall River had no daguerreotypists, and Newport had just one or two early in the 1840s). Baker and others not only created daguerreotypes, but they also sold the necessary equipment and offered lessons in the art of daguerreotyping to the public. Hence Baker’s studio bore the grander title of Daguerreotype Institute.
Elisha Baker caught hold of the first wave of enthusiasm that followed the introduction of daguerreotypes in the United States. However, the daguerreotype portraits with which we are most familiar were an innovation that came about only after American daguerreotypists found ways to decrease the length of time necessary for exposure. Middle-class Americans, those who could never before could have paid for painted portraits, were able to purchase daguerreotype portraits at very reasonable prices. Their family likenesses could now rest in frames above the mantelpiece too—the likeness was, if anything, more accurate than that proffered by a portraitist. And like an original painting, each daguerreotype was unique; there was no way to make additional prints. Examining early daguerreotypes today one is tempted to say that these original works do possess an aura that reproduced photographic prints do not.
But visual art would soon enter the age of mechanical reproduction, and new technology would challenge the success of the daguerreotype technique and of the men who practiced it. Since the daguerreotype image appeared on polished metal it was both delicate and heavy, and the size was restricted to just a few inches in width and height. A cheaper process was developed by the mid-1850s, leading to ambrotypes and tintypes, and paper prints reproduced from a glass negative also became available. As the Civil War encouraged the use of glass negatives that could be used to print thousands of copies of an image, daguerreotyping shrunk to a niche business for a handful of artists who remained dedicated to the technique. By 1852, Baker was no longer listed as a daguerreotypist but instead as a manufacturer located at 400 N. Main Street. Few other Providence daguerreotypists survived the 1850s, and after the Civil War, the Manchester brothers operated the only remaining firm, though they produced photographs as well.
Erik Christiansen, PhD, Rhode Island College
Further Reading
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History of the State of Rhode Island with Illustrations, Albert J. Wright, Publisher, Phila. Hong, Wade, & Co. 1878.
Romer, Grant B. and Brian Wallis, Eds. Young America: The Daguerreotypes of Southworth & Hawes. Rochester, N.Y.: George Eastman House, 2005.
Taylor, Maureen. “Nature Caught at the Twinkling of an Eye”: The Daguerreotype in Providence. Rhode Island History 42, No. 4 (November 1983): 110-121.
Elisha Baker seems to have done well enough for himself in his middle age to retire fairly early. In the 1860 census, at age 63, his occupation was listed as “gentleman,” with real estate holdings of $15,900 and a personal estate worth $5,500. The Baker family resided from the 1840s onward at 24 Benefit Street in a house built by Samuel Staples in the late 1820s. Baker’s son Daniel, then age 29, had been working as a jeweler since his teenage years. By 1870 Baker’s personal estate was valued at $16,600, and his real estate at $10,400. His 32-year-old daughter Harriet still resided at home with her parents, though she would marry widower Henry B. Olmstead in June of 1872. One year later, on June 11, 1873, Elisha Baker died and was interred at the North Burial Ground. His wife Harriet joined him there in 1876.
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