Original Photograph of Tzu Chey (Mrs. Minnie Size) Laguna Pueblo, 1902 [SOLD]

William Henry Jackson was born in 1843 in New York.  His mother was a painter and with her instruction, he began painting at a young age. His first job was retouching photographs in a studio where he learned about the new art of photography.

He joined the Army during the Civil War and spent his spare time making sketches of military life. He was at Gettysburg, but did not see combat. These sketches, which his mother saved, are one of the best documentations of military life during the Civil War.

Following the war he became very successful in the photo business and was engaged to a woman from a prominent family. The engagement ended in 1866 and a broken-hearted Jackson took the advice of Horace Greely and went west. He worked as a bullwhacker, a driver of oxen, for a mining company along the Oregon Trail.  He continued to sketch the land, people and activities he encountered and soon came to realize that his life’s work would be documenting the changing American West.

Jackson opened a photo studio in Omaha in 1868. His work photographing the construction of the Union Pacific railroad included images of Yellowstone, and his photos were instrumental in Congress deciding to make Yellowstone the first National Park in 1872. Jackson continued to photograph the west and in 1878 moved his studio to Denver. He continued working into his eighties, when he decided to go back to painting. He painted the west he had photographed until his death in 1942 at the age of 99.

William Henry Jackson was one of the greatest photographers of the American West.  A photograph by him would be a priceless addition to any collection.

The original copy of this photograph of Tzu-Chey is in the Denver Public Library collection.Jackson took this portrait of Tzu-Chey (Mrs. Minnie Size), as she balances a large olla on her head, at the Laguna Indian Reservation in New Mexico. She wears a printed scarf over her head, bead, turquoise, and silver necklaces, hoop earrings and a hand-woven manta. The photo was taken in 1902. The pot is representative of that time period when the railroad went through Laguna Pueblo and the potters would sell their pieces to travelers on the railroad.

Across the bottom of the photograph is the following: “Tzu Chey” (Mrs. Minnie Size) at Pueblo of Laguna, N.M.  On lower right is an embossed oval stating Copyright 1902 by Detroit Photographic.  On the back of the frame is written in beautiful cursive handwriting “Grand Tetons, Teton National Park, Wyo.”  The frame is original to the photograph.

Condition: very good condition with some minor scratches in the upper part of the photograph.

Provenance: from the collection of a family from Colorado