Carleton Watkins Valparaíso, 1849
daguerreotypes with what the artists drew. Like the pair of daguerreotypes described above, the daguerreotypes used as sources for the lithograph were made from a position at the northwestern perimeter of the warehouse district looking southeast from a spot lower in elevation than the Castle of San Antonio and showing a much wider field of vision.
We are told in words by the publisher of the lithograph that the artist or artists were looking at more than one daguerreotype by the caption in large letters in the center of the bottom margin: "Drawn on stone from daguerreotypes taken by W. G. Helsby." There was no reliable method to photo-mechanically transfer the photographs onto the lithography stone so this was done by hand. It appears that the source for the lithographs was a visually sophisticated two or three part segmented panorama realized by rotating the camera between exposures.. When the finished plates were put side-by-side, a panoramic span encompassing 135-150 compass degrees was achieved.
Whether Helsby was the actual maker of the source daguerreotypes as the caption states is a matter open to question since there are no other comparable daguerreotypes showing scenes in Valparaíso that can securely be identified as his work. Like the other daguerreians of his time, Helsby was a portraitist and would have lacked the advanced skills that were required to make the technically demanding set of daguerreotypes used as the source for the lithograph. It is likely that Helsby followed the pattern of his neighbor, Robert Vance, and was in possession of an image that had been made by someone skilled in the craft of outdoor daguerreian views. This was possibly by the same unidentified person who created the pair of daguerreotypes looking across the harbor of Valparaíso towards the clock tower and the American Consul’s residence.
Evidence that the lithograph was made in the early 1850s, and thus after Carleton’s arrival in Valparaíso, is found in the margin where we see the name of the publishers, the firm of Maclure, Macdonald and Macgregor, that operated printing establishments in Liverpool (commenced 1840), London (commenced 1845) and Manchester (commenced 1850), thus providing a terminus post quem of 1850 for when the lithograph was created.[27]
The lithograph embodies two indirect references to the history of photography. One is through the name of Andrew Maclure, founder of the publishing enterprise with his name in the first position. Maclure occupies a
[27] The lithograph was not deposited for copyright protection in the legal depository at the British Museum London, according to Sheila O’Connell of the B.M.