CHARLES JONES was head gardener at Ote Hall, Sussex, England, and his subjects are the fruit, vegetables and flowers he grew on that estate. The works were discovered in 1981, when a trunk of JONES’ photographs came to light at the Bermondsey Market in London. Since then JONES has been the subject of a book by Robert Flynn Johnson and Sean Sexton, Plant Kingdoms: The Photographs of Charles Jones (Smithmark Publishers, New York, 1998), and of museum exhibitions at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California, in 1998, and at Le Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1999.
The vintage photographs range from the 1850s to the 1950s and include ambrotypes, daguerreotypes, gelatin silver prints with sepia toning and color coupler prints. Of the fifteen works, four were taken by known professional photographers of their time, while the remaining photographs are by unknown photographers from Britain, the United States and France. There is also a selection of cased photographs, two of which are in Union Cases.
WILSON A. BENTLEY (1865 – 1931)
Snowflake
Vintage photomicrograph on printing out paper with gold chloride toning from glass plate negative, 3 x 3 9/16 inches
Executed between 1885 - 1931
CHARLES JONES (1866 – 1959)
Celery Wrights White
Vintage gold-toned gelatin silver print, 8 1/2 x 6 7/16 inches
Signed and inscribed (on the back, in pencil): Celery/ Wrights White/ C.J
Executed about 1895 – 1910
ANONYMOUS BRITISH
Tattooed Torso: Back
Gelatin silver print with sepia toning,
4 13/16 x 3 1/2 inches (sight)
Probably executed about 1900
WILSON A. BENTLEY (1865-1931)
Snowflake
Vintage photomicrograph on printing out paper with gold chloride toning from glass plate negative
3 9/16 x 2 15/16 inches (detail)
Executed between 1885-1931
CHARLES JONES (1866-1959)
Lyon
Vintage gold-toned gelatin silver print
6 1/16 x 4 1/4 inches (detail)
Executed about 1895-1910
WILSON A. BENTLEY, CHARLES JONES OCTOBER 25 - NOVEMBER 21, 2007
and a SELECTION OF VINTAGE PHOTOGRAPHS
This show consists of fifty-two works by WILSON A BENTLEY (1865-1931), CHARLES JONES (1866-1959) and a selection of vintage photographs by known and unknown photographers.
WILSON A. BENTLEY coined the phrase “No two snowflakes are alike.” He grew up in Jericho, Vermont, and developed a life-long fascination for snow. His parents bought him a camera with a microscope attached with which he discovered how to photograph snowflakes. The process was difficult, made more so by the temporary nature of the subject – many snowflakes melted before BENTLEY could capture their images on film, making the photographs extremely rare.
ANONYMOUS BRITISH
Gigantic Pumpkin in North London, November 5, 1929
Vintage silver print, 9 7/16 x 7 7/16 inches (image)
DAVIS & LANGDALE COMPANY, INC.
NEW YORK, NY 10021
212-838-0333