by Susan Couso
Peter Lassen is fairly well-known in Lassen County. After all, the county is named after him. He only spent five years in the Honey Lake region before he was killed in 1859, but he got a whole bunch of stuff named in his honor.
We know quite a bit about Lassen who was born in Denmark in 1800, but unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of information as to his appearance.
Historical records show that he was only 5’2” tall. Napoleon Bonaparte would have towered over him at five-feet-seven, but that didn’t seem to deter the Dane from seeking fortune and adventure.
Regrettably, the world really has only had one true likenesses of the man who changed local history so much, simply by existing.
Photographer Robert Henry Vance was trained as a Daguerreian, and he brought his skills out west. Vance traveled to California in 1850, and he became the first known photographer to capture the essence of California’s Native tribes.
Vance also excelled in photographing the miners and settlers who traveled to our state, and he had a keen eye for noticing the images which would best portray this vital era in the growth of the area. Robert Henry Vance is the only person known to have secured a true and accurate image of Peter Lassen.
Vance’s daguerreotypes became famous, and his work made him wealthy. He opened galleries throughout California, Nevada and as far away as Hong Kong and Chile.
In 1851 he exhibited in New York City, which resulted in rave reviews and huge crowds seeking to see the Wild West from afar. But even with the interest of the eastern enthusiasts, the exhibit was not a financial success.
A ‘lot’ of more than three hundred of Vance’s daguerreotypes was auctioned off in 1853, first landing in the hands of Jeremiah Gurney and later John Fitzgibbon. These three hundred precious images of California’s new beginnings disappeared in the early 1900’s, and it is within this collection that Peter Lassen’s photograph is thought to have existed.
Luckily, before these photos were lost, an artist of immense talent emerged to capture Peter Lassen’s effigy. Between July 1856 and June 1861, publisher and promoter James Hutchings published Hutchings’ Illustrated California Magazine, and in the February 1859 issue of this magazine, Charles Nahl’s fantastic woodcut of Peter Lassen appeared.
The caption below Nahl’s Lassen woodcut tells that it was taken from Robert Vance’s photo.
Charles Christian Heinrich Nahl was a German-born artist who fled political unrest in Germany and then France before coming to the United States and spending the last part of his life in California.
He arrived here in 1849, at the beginning of the Gold Rush, and began attempting to make a fortune in the mines. That did not ‘pan out’, and Nahl turned to painting to make a living. He became one of the most significant artists in California history, capturing the new state as it tried to deal with immense growth and change. Charles Nahl’s amazingly beautiful paintings bring the Gold Rush to life with spectacular color.
Nahl opened a studio in Sacramento with his brother, Arthur and friend, August Wenderoth. After the fire of 1852 swept through their studio and turned their work into ashes, the men moved to San Francisco. Charles Nahl worked under the patronage of Judge Edwin B. Crocker and was commissioned to paint the scenes and the people who represented his new state’s evolution.
Charles Nahl’s engraving of a Grizzly bear is said to have been the image used for the state’s flag. He is considered by many to be California’s first artist to accurately represent life among the miners and settlers who rushed to the west coast. Nahl also did extensive work illustrating and engraving.
As Charles Nahl was making a name for himself, another artist arrived on the scene.
Stephen William Shaw was born in 1817 in Vermont, a year before Nahl. Shaw had spent years in the east and south, teaching art and painting portraits on commission. He took a steamer from New Orleans and traveled over the Isthmus of Panama before landing in San Francisco in 1849.
Shaw entered the art scene in Sacramento in 1850 and was also commissioned by Crocker to show the world, through his paintings, what California was all about. In 1873, he painted a portrait of Peter Lassen, the man who had already made a name for himself in the Golden State.
Lassen died in 1859, so Shaw’s amazing portrait was composed from earlier likenesses, either Vance’s photo or Nahl’s wood cut. Shaw, who had traveled the world with his art career, settled in California, and died in San Francisco in 1900.
Charles Adrian Rutherford was a distinguished artist who usually specialized in paintings of the harvest, and he was called upon to recreate Lassen’s likeness also. Rutherford was born in Tomales, California and was well-known for his work. As an opposite to Nahl’s vibrant colors, Rutherford specialized in the soft translucent tones found among the clusters of grapes.
Frona Eunice Waite Colburn had a fascination with Lassen Peak and wrote a book about it, The Kingship of Mt. Lassen, which was published in 1922. She needed an image of Peter Lassen for her book, and asked Charles A. Rutherford to take on the task.
Rutherford complied, making his painting from previous work, since the photo of Lassen had been lost earlier. The original oil painting, by Charles Rutherford, is said to have been placed in the Grand Lodge of the Masonic Temple in San Francisco.
Today, when you see the image of the scruffy-looking little Dane, you can thank these creative people for understanding his importance and doing what they could to preserve his memory.
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