Studio register of Mrs. R. Maynard's Photographic Gallery, 1891-1899
- MS-3325
- Item
- [ca.1891 to 1899]
Part of Maynard family collection
Item consists of one studio register created by Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Gallery that documents client orders from 1891 to 1899 and represents studio-based business transactions over a ten year period. It consists of 248 pages and contains entries for negative numbers 1025 to 6240. The record represents over 5,000 customer entries, likely referring to portrait orders fulfilled at several different locations of the Maynard Studio. Also included within the pages of the register is a small number of textual documents that refer to customer requests for non-portrait photographs that appear to have been furnished through the photographic studio. The author of the register appears to be either Mrs. R. Maynard or Arthur S. Rappertie, an employee of Hannah Maynard.
During this period, the studio was located at two different locations in Victoria, British Columbia. From 1874 to 1892, the studio was located on Douglas and Johnson Streets. In 1888, the studio is described in the publication The New West (Winnipeg) as having: “… superior facilities for executing all orders in the promptest and most satisfactory manner…” In 1892 until 1912, the studio was relocated 41 Pandora Avenue (renumbered to 717 Pandora ca. 1907). Many of Hannah Maynard's photographs after this date bear the address "41 1/2 Pandora Avenue near Douglas Street. Several employees worked for the studio throughout its existence. It is estimated that Arthur S. Rappertie (1854?-1923) worked for Hannah Maynard in the 1870s to early 1900s as either her assistant or photographer. Nicholas Herman Hendricks (1869-1946) was also employed by Hannah Maynard for a period. The signatures of both Mrs. R. Maynard and A.S. Rappertie are handwritten within the first initial pages of the studio register. The record does not note the corresponding Maynard Studio address alongside client entries, however orders are dated by the references to the year of the transaction, a date which appears at the top of selected register pages throughout the record.
By the 1890s, Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Gallery already been a creator of conventional portraits in the popular carte de visite format and capturing the likenesses of gold miners and sailors, as well as Indigenous people whose studio portraits were commercially popular in and around Victoria during the early 1860s and 1870s. Children and family portraits were also a unique market provided for by the Maynard Studio, with photographic products including miniature portraits and composite images. In the period between 1891 and 1899, Hannah Maynard was producing experimental photographic works, including the "Gems of British Columbia" series of composite photographs. The montage works featured selected portraits of children and babies, largely Anglo-European subjects as well as a number of Chinese clients and Black families, photographed throughout the year were produced and sent as New Year's greeting cards to clients from 1881 until about 1895. In the 1890s, the studio facilitated the photographing of mugshots for prisoners for several years, when Hannah Maynard became the official photographer for the Victoria city police in 1897. Data on photographic orders noted in this record consists of date of order, number of negative, size and style of portrait (the bulk of which are carte de visites), quantity and price paid, and sometimes specific customization instructions of photographs ordered, as well as shipping information.
Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Gallery clientele included the spectrum of the Victoria population including notable members of Victorian colonial society, temporary visitors, members of the navy, as well as pioneering Anglo-European, Indigenous, Black (including African American and Caribbean families) and Chinese individuals, families and communities. Client information frequently contained within register entries includes names, place of residence, family relationships, and occasionally identifiers for race or ethnicity for clients not perceived as Anglo-European. Customer names recorded within the approximately 5,000 register entries range from “Mrs. Bossi” and “Mr. Powell” to “Mrs. Alexander and 2 children (Clifford and Mildred Alexander),” “Tie Sue, Chinamen,” and “A Japanese, J Adachi,” to “Chief Sheppard and family,” and “George Alexander” of the HMS Ship Nymphe. Some clients appear multiple times throughout the record. In addition, the initials “CM” and "CL" repeat frequently and appear to relate to clients perceived to be of Chinese or Asian heritage (for examples see “CM Lee Hoo” on register page number 50, “6 C.M. Ah Hoye” on register page number 79 and “CM & C Lady” on register page number 93. Not all given and family names are recorded, as in the case of many clients perceived to be of Chinese heritage, whose entries are generic and general terms such as “Chinamen.” Stated places of residence for the Maynard Studio clientele represented in this record range across British Columbia from in and around Victoria, around South Vancouver Island (locations such as Sidney, Nanaimo, Chemainus and Comox), Salts Spring Island, Haida Gwaii (including Alert Bay), and on the mainland (including Vancouver and Lytton). The register also documents the orders of portrait clients with residences noted as at or near the naval base in the neighbouring community of Esquimalt. Locations such as the dockyard, naval yard or barracks appear listed in the record, as well as the names of British warships that visited the base not limited to: Egeria, Leander, Icarus, Imperieuse, Pheasant and Wild Swan. Many of these client entries are located near the rear of the register.
During the 1870s and 1880s, Hannah and her husband, Richard Maynard, took several working trips, and some they took together where they both practiced landscape photography. This included trips to Vancouver Island, Haida Gwaii (then referred to as the Queen Charlotte Islands) and to Banff, Alberta. She used landscape views as well as studio portraits as source material for composite works, such as the blended “documentary” image of a field photograph depicting a view of community village scene and a studio portrait of an Indigenous women. In the early 1900s, Hannah Maynard supplied ethnographic documentary photographs of Indigenous people of B.C.'s Northwest Coast to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard in the United States. In addition to the recorded customer transactions for portraits relating to negative numbers 1025 to 6240, there are several other textual documents found inserted throughout the pages of the register that appear to refer to non-portrait photographs orders furnished through the Maynard Studio. One order handwritten on an excerpt of stationary from the final location of Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Studio on Pandora Street, contains the name and location of G.W. Lilly and Westholme, B.C. and lists the names of several British warships (Pheasant, Imperieuse, Icarus and Wild Swan). Another undated note addressed to Dr. Dorsey at the Field Columbia Museum in Chicago lists a small number of general descriptions noting field and landscape photographs described as depicting Indigenous lifeways and cultural material from communities on the mainland of British Columbia including Bella Coola and Knight Inlet. Finally, located near the beginning of the register there is a single record of correspondence written on The Colonist letterhead between F.A. Harrison and H. Maynard dated March 3rd, 1900 and referring to the return of photographs loaned in 1897.
Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Gallery
