Item MS-3361 - Photograph album of Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Gallery

Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Gallery (1862? to 1912) was a commercial photography business based in Fort Victoria in the Colony of Vancouver Island (now the city of Victoria in the province of British Columbia). It is believed the studio opened around 1862 by photographer Hannah Hatherly Maynard (1834-1918). During the course of the business, the studio and the personal history of Hannah Maynard and her family are closely linked. Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Gallery was in operation in Victoria for 50 years.

The studio had several locations over the course of its history, most notably operations at Douglas, Johnston and Pandora Streets in Victoria. Published references to it in the news media of the day cited several variants of the name including Mr. R. Maynard’s Gallery, Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Studio, and Maynard’s Photographic Gallery. Over the course of the studio’s history, a number of imprints circulated on the backs of photographic works, sometimes multiple imprints per location. After the first location, Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Gallery shared the premises with Richard Maynard’s boot and shoe business. Several employees worked for the studio over time. 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. In addition, Maynard family members were involved with the family business including Albert Hatherly Maynard (1857-1934), son of Hannah and Richard Maynard, who eventually managed their photographic stock after their retirement and operated his own photographic business.

As a successful commercial business, it contained popular studio accessories in the tradition of 19th-century photographic portraiture and included pedestals, decorative chairs and tables, the floor tiling or carpets, painted scenic backdrops, pillars and curtains. Studio accessories were included or not to capture portraits and likenesses, depending on the sitter. Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Gallery likely benefited from photographic equipment purchased at supply wholesalers like Anthony's in New York in the mid-1870s. In 1888 the studio is described in The New West (Winnipeg) as having: “… superior facilities for executing all orders in the promptest and most satisfactory manner…” In the later years, client records were kept. General information on client transactions and the portraits and photographs they ordered was recorded in a studio register representing clients over a ten year period from 1891-1899.

Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Gallery provided a range of photographic subjects and in various formats. Works of several photographers were marketed and available including both the works of Hannah and her photographer husband Richard Maynard. In the early years the studio produced conventional portraits for clients in the popular format of the carte de visite, including likenesses of gold miners and sailors. The studio was also one of the most prolific creators of carte de visites of First Nations subjects which were popular in and around Victoria during the early 1860s and 1870s, which disseminated a certain depiction of First Nations and Indigenous people to public consumers. Children and family portraits were also a unique market provided for, with photographic products including miniature portraits and composite images in later years. 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.

Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Gallery clientele included the "upper echelons of Victoria society" including the Cridge, Douglas, O'Reilly, and Crease families, and members of the colonial government such as Victoria mayor John Grant. It also served the spectrum of the Victoria population including temporary visitors as well as pioneering Anglo-European, Indigenous, Black (including the Alexander and Spotts families) and Chinese individuals, families and communities.

In additional to Hannah’s conventional portraits, photographic "views" taken by Richard Maynard was available for order or purchase at the Maynard Studio and at other commercial operations in Victoria and on the mainland, in businesses such as the Kamloops Book Store, Pearson & Co’s Book and Stationary Store in Yale and W. Harrison in Yale. The studio benefited from the results of Richard’s government photographic jobs, such as those created through his work as the photographer accompanying government officials including Israel Wood Powell on his tours of inspection of Coast Salish and Interior Salish First Nation and Indigenous communities along the coast of Vancouver Island and on the mainland in the early 1870s, and during the construction of the transcontinental railway in the 1880s. The Gallery sold his landscape views, ethnographic portraits and documentary photography in various formats including stereographs. In addition, the works of other photographers were marketed including Victoria photographer Frederick Dally, since photographers often sold their original glass plate negatives to other photographers when they went out of business, along with other business practices of the period.

In addition to portraits and views, Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Gallery also produced composite photographs and portrait montages, and other experimental works including photo sculptures as advertisements and to help develop client relations. The "Gems of British Columbia" series of portrait montages of selected children, largely Anglo-European subjects as well as a number of clients from Black and Chinese pioneer families, photographed throughout the year were sent as New Year's greeting cards to clients from 1881 until about 1895. In the 1880s these composite photographs, which sometimes incorporated photo sculptures, were published annually in the trade publication St. Louis Photographer (also known as St. Louis and Canadian Photographer). The publicity broadcasted the studio’s portfolio of child and baby portraiture as well as experimental photography styles across North America.

On September 29, 1912, the Victoria Daily Colonist announced Hannah Maynard’s retirement at the age of 78 and the closure of the Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Gallery. She is quoted as saying “I think I can say with every confidence that we photographed everyone in the town at one time or another.” The Maynard Studio appears to have never reopened. Around 1910, Hannah Maynard appears to have disposed of her camera equipment to a photographer identified as “a Chinese photographer named Peter on Government Street.” Her will was executed by her son Albert H. Maynard, who continued on as successor to R. Maynard and operated his own photographic business.