Timothy H. O'Sullivan
Historic Spanish Record of the Conquest, South Side of Inscription Rock, New Mexico, No 3.

Historic Spanish Record of the Conquest, South Side of Inscription Rock, New Mexico, No 3.

Public Domain

Historic Spanish Record of the Conquest, South Side of Inscription Rock, New Mexico, No 3.
ArtistAmerican, born Ireland, 1840–1882
CultureAmerican
Titles
  • Historic Spanish Record of the Conquest, South Side of Inscription Rock, New Mexico, No 3.
Date1873
Place depictedLos Lunas, New Mexico, United States
MediumAlbumen silver print from glass negative
DimensionsImage: 8 × 10 7/8 in. (20.3 × 27.6 cm)
Sheet: 8 × 10 7/8 in. (20.3 × 27.6 cm)
Mount: 15 1/2 × 19 in. (39.4 × 48.3 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by W. Burt Nelson
Object number2014.90
Non exposé

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Department
Photography
Object Type
Description

Apprenticed in the Washington, D.C., portrait studio of Mathew Brady and matured and tested under the most trying conditions as a field photographer during the Civil War, Timothy O’Sullivan was perfectly suited to participate in the postwar government-sponsored expeditions in the American West, including the 1871 and 1873 seasons of George Wheeler’s survey of territory west of the 100th meridian. At Inscription Rock, New Mexico, a towering formation with a reliable watering hole at its base, Wheeler’s team stopped at a spot that for centuries had attracted travelers, many of whom left marks carved on the natural stone wall. Among those earlier visitors was Don Joseph de Payba Basconzelos, who paid for the return of expelled council (cabildo) members to Santa Fe from Mexico City after a three-and-a-half-year banishment by New Mexico’s governor. The translation of his writing is “The Ensign Don Joseph de Payba Basconzelos passed through here on the 18th of February, 1726, the year he returned, at his own expense, the members of the cabildo to the kingdom.”


Like many an explorer or archaeologist, O’Sullivan included a yardstick in his frame to provide scale, but here it seems to take on a central role, as if to suggest the power of positivism (and its ideal recording tool, photography) to measure and therefore comprehend physical space, the passage of time, and man’s place in the natural world. So inverted are the photograph’s nominal subject and the photographer’s intervention that O’Sullivan’s picture might well be mistaken for a work of 1960s or 1970s conceptual art.


Provenance[Villa Grisebach Auktionen GmbH, Berlin, November 29, 2007, lot 1665]; purchased by Rudolf and Annette Kicken, Berlin; [Charles Isaacs Photographs, Inc., New York]; [Etherton Gallery, Tucson, Arizona]; [Charles Isaacs Photographs, Inc., New York]; purchased by MFAH, 2014.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Inscribed in negative, lower right corner: 9 [backwards]
Inscribed on mount recto in pencil: A1412
Inscribed on mount verso in pencil: O'Sullivan; S 1229 / ST 1581
Printed on mount recto upper center a circular seal with a shield with eagle and laurel: WAR DEPARTMENT CORPS OF ENGINEERS. U.S. ARMY.

Printed on mount recto: Geographical & Geological Explorations & Surveys West of the 100th Meridian

Printed on mount recto: Expedition of 1873 - Lieut. Geo. M Wheeler. Corps of Engineers, Commanding.

Printed on mount recto lower left below the image: T.H.O'Sullivan. Phot.

Printed on mount recto lower right below the image: No. 9

Printed on mount recto lower margin: HISTORIC SPANISH RECORD OF THE CONQUEST / South Side of Inscription Rock, N.M. No3

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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Timothy H. O'Sullivan
May 1865
Albumen silver print from glass negative
2023.234.2.30
Timothy H. O'Sullivan
January 1865
Albumen silver print from glass negative
2023.234.2.29
Timothy H. O'Sullivan
May 1865
Albumen silver print from glass negative
2023.234.2.31
Timothy H. O'Sullivan
May 1865
Albumen silver print from glass negative
2023.234.2.34
Quarters of Men in Fort Sedgwick, Generally Known as Fort Hell
Timothy H. O'Sullivan
May 1865
Albumen silver print from glass negative
2023.234.2.33
Timothy H. O'Sullivan
April 1865
Albumen silver print from glass negative
2023.234.2.35
Timothy H. O'Sullivan
June 1864
Albumen silver print from glass negative
2023.234.2.18