Henry P. Bosse Collection

THE HENRY BOSSE COLLECTION

HENRY PETER BOSSE (1844 - 1903) is widely recog-nized as one of the two or three most important photog-raphers of the Mississippi River, and the most important from the nineteenth century. He extensively photo-graphed the Upper Mississippi from 1883 to 1893, a time of unprecedented environmental and social change. His work was practically unknown until a century later when a major album of his work was rediscovered. Since then, his photographs have been exhibited at the Smithsonian and other national museums and purchased by numer-ous public and private art collections around the world including, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Amon Carter Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the National Museum of American Art, and the Minneapolis Institue of Arts.

Boatyard at Wabasha, Minnesota, 1890Cyanotype

Image 11” x 13 1/2” Paper aprx. 14” x 17”

“It was a time of dramatic change on the Mississippi Riv-er and in America, and Bosse’s photographs became part of the great commercial and military achievements of the late 1800s. His legacy is secured by rare pictures of a river never to be seen again. The photographs leave the mod-ern viewer with a sense of nostaliga, a yearning for the natural river that was lost to the forces of commerce.”

—Merry A. ForestaViews on the Mississippi

From Hills at Dallas City, Illinois Looking Down Stream, 1889Cyanotype

Image 11” x 13 1/2” Paper aprx. 14” x 17”

“Henry Bosse’s photographs are more than just art. They chronicle the first systematic effort to recast the upper Mississippi from a natural river into a modern commer-cial highway...”

—John O. AnfinsonHenry Bosse’s Views of the Upper Mississippi River

Breakwater at Stockholm, Wisconsin, 1889Cyanotype

Image 11” x 13 1/2” Paper aprx. 14” x 17”

It is a strange study, a singular phenomenon, if you please, that the only real, independent and genuine gentlemen in the world go quietly up and down the Mississippi River, asking no homage of any one, seeking no popularity, no notoriety, and not caring a damn whether school keeps or not.

—Mark Twain (in a letter to Will Bowen)

Eagle Point, 1885Cyanotype

Image 11” x 13 1/2” Paper aprx. 14” x 17”

The accession of territory [the Mississippi Territory by the Americans], affirms forever the power of the United States, and I have just given England a maritime rival that sooner or later will lay low her pride.

—Napoleon Bonaparte

Fort Madison, Iowa, 1885Cyanotype

Image 11” x 13 1/2” Paper aprx. 14” x 17”

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

—Leonardo da Vinci

Broken Closing Dam in Shokokon Slough, 1891Cyanotype

Image 11” x 13 1/2” Paper aprx. 14” x 17”

“Photographs” Album Covermixed media, ephemera

UNIQUE HANDMADE ALBUM BY HENRY BOSSE

Bosse’s Christmas CardPen & Ink drawing

MAJOR ALEXANDER MACKENZIE was a regional commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the end of the 19th century. MacKenzie oversaw the Corps’ first major navigational improvement of the upper Missis-sippi; its goal was to allow low–water passage of steam-boats between St. Louis and Minneapolis. MacKenzie turned to Henry Bosse, his chief draftsman, to document the Corps’ decade-long project.

Untitled (Major Alexander Mackenzie)Toned Gelatin Silver Print

5 1/4” x 3 1/2”

ORIGINAL BOSSE DRAWINGS

MEMBERS OF THE ARMY CORP OF ENGINEERS

THE FOLLOWING seven pages are highlights from a collection of approximately one-hundred and forty prints of photographs attributed to Henry P. Bosse.

Lock Pit, St. Mary’s Falls Canal, 1893Cyanotype

Laying Last Stone, 1893Cyanotype

Lock Pit, St. Mary’s Falls Canal, 1893Cyanotype7 7/16” x 9 1/2”

Inlet Pipe, 1893Cyanotype

7 1/2” x 9 1/2”

As an atlas, Henry Bosse’s Views on the Mississippi River is more than a classical map augmented by photographic views. A drawn map is inherently idealized, static. Bosse’s river is the water itself, moving, forever changing, a se-quence of encounters and tides, rising and falling...After its publication, there could be no doubt that photography would redefine cartography.

—Charles WehrenbergHenry P. Bosse: American Impressionist

“The great eras in the history of the arts are not eras of increased artistic feeling, but, primarily, of increased tech-nical feeling – a feeling which must originate with the workman. It is above all the first movement which has brought the handicraftsman and the artist together. To separate them would rob the handicraftsman of all the best art he has ever known.”

—Oscar Wilde

Untitled (Henry P. Bosse)Toned Gelatin Silver Print

5 1/8” x 3 1/2”