DeLancey W. Gill
Photograph of a young and bearded DeLancey W. Gill, showing head and shoulders.
Gill in 1885
Born
DeLancey Walker Gill

(1859-07-01)July 1, 1859
Camden, South Carolina, U.S.
DiedAugust 31, 1940(1940-08-31) (aged 81)
Alexandria, Virginia, U.S.
Employers
Spouses
Rose DeLima Draper
​
​
(m. 1881; died 1893)​
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1895; div. 1903)​
      Katharine Schley Hemmick
      ​
      ​
      (m. 1905)​
      Children8, including Minna P.

      DeLancey Walker Gill (July 1, 1859 – August 31, 1940) was an American drafter, landscape painter, and photographer known for his paintings of Washington, D.C., and his portrait photography of Native Americans with the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE). Gill first became noted for his landscape illustrations and watercolors, mainly centered on Washington, although also including views of Native American pueblos. Characterized as precise and exact in his landscapes, Gill captured views of working-class and rural areas of D.C. not commonly depicted in period art.

      Initially employed as an illustrator and draftsman, Gill was director of the Division of Illustration at the BAE from 1889 to 1932. Although not trained in photography, Gill assumed a role as the BAE's head photographer following the resignation of two of the Smithsonian's prior photographers. In this role, he produced thousands of photographs of Native American delegations for the Bureau, including notable figures such as Geronimo and Chief Joseph. Gill's photographic work was showcased in Smithsonian publications, the Panama–Pacific Exposition and on a 1923 postage stamp. His portraiture has been praised for its pictoralist qualities and strength of design. However, the Smithsonian's phrenological motivations behind the photography and the occasional use of outdated or misattributed props and clothing given to subjects have soured its reputation in contemporary scholarship.

      Early life and painting career

      Watercolor painting by DeLancey W. Gill.
      Mouth of James Creek, by Gill c. 1880s, showing the Capitol as seen from a rural portion of Washington

      DeLancey Walker Gill was born in Camden, South Carolina, on July 1, 1859 to William Harrison Gill.[1][2] When he was five his father, a merchant, was killed in action in service of the Confederate Army; nine years later his mother and stepfather moved to Fort Laramie in the Wyoming Territory. Gill chose instead to move in with an aunt in Washington, D.C. He briefly worked as a typesetter before finding employment as a draftsman for the Office of the Supervising Architect for the U.S. Treasury, rendering ornamental ironwork and tiles. He was noted for his abilities in capturing linear perspective.[1]

      While employed as a draftsman, Gill began a series of ink sketches and watercolor paintings, primarily of D.C. landscapes. He focused on capturing the rural periphery and villages within the district, still undeveloped in the period.[3] These brought Gill a considerable amount of acclaim, to the point that Gill received a greater income from art sales than his work with the Treasury.[1]

      His paintings were shown at exhibitions in Contemporary art criticism was favorable to Gill's work, with a reviewer for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle describing his landscapes as "airy, clean, silvery" and highly distinct from other watercolorists.[4] The art historians Andrew Cosentino and Henry Glassie described Gill's landscape work as having a "razor-sharp clarity of image", citing an account from an anonymous art critic that his watercolors possessed a "certain microscopic exactness and delicacy of detail."[5] Cheryl Miller praised Gill's work as offering a view on subjects not commonly depicted within contemporary D.C. art, especially working class people and rural neighborhoods.[3]

      A watercolor painting of a desert pueblo by DeLancey W. Gill.
      Pueblo Bonito Ruin, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, by Gill, 1888

      William Henry Holmes, a fellow watercolor painter and the chief of illustration within the United States Geological Survey (USGS), hired Gill as a paleontological draftsman in 1884. Holmes came to greatly respect his artistic work, later claiming that "as an illustrator in pen, pencil, and water-colour, and as a photographer, he had few equals." In part to this admiration, Gill rapidly was promoted through the USGS, in 1889 succeeding Holmes as chief of illustration when he joined the Bureau of American Ethnology to direct archaeological operations. In this duty Gill managed the publication of illustrations and photography, reviewing hundreds of thousands of copies of printed illustrations per year. As John Wesley Powell was the director of both the USGS and the Bureau of American Ethnology, Gill additionally became supervisor of illustration for the BAE without additional pay.[1]

      During his initial time with the Bureau in the late 1880s, Gill produced paintings of southwestern pueblos, departing from his prior focus on Washington.[1] These included the Hopi pueblo of Oraibi,[6] the ruins of Pueblo Bonito, and the Zuni Pueblo. His painting of Oraibi was based off an earlier photograph by Smithsonian photographer John K. Hillers, but no photographic source is known for the other pueblos within the series. Gill accounted for minutiae such as climatic differences in his landscapes, making use of thin washes for his depictions of southwestern locations.[5] In 1889 he discovered archaic stone tools while sketching at Rock Creek Park, later taking in situ photographs of the artifacts for an archaeological exploration of the park organized by Holmes. This would be Gill's first published photographic work.[1]

      Photography

      A Yakama man's face in profile, facing left. He is wearing a mix of native and western clothing, with a feather in his hair.
      Profile of a Yakama man by Gill, 1906. BAE portraits were posed to allow for facial and cranial measurements of subjects.

      In 1894, Powell resigned from the USGS to focus on administration of the BAE, with Gill following four years later in order to continue work on Bureau publications. William Dinwiddie had resigned as photographer for the BAE in 1897 due to difficulties with other members of the staff, including Gill. His replacement, Wells M. Sawyer, resigned the following year to pursue a more lucrative position inspecting furniture for the Treasury.[7][1] Despite having no prior training in photography, Gill was appointed to this position following Sawyer's resignation.[1] As photographer for the Bureau, Gill's work consisted of portrait photography of Native American subjects in the hundreds of individuals per year, as well as classifying and cataloging the resulting photographic negatives.[7][1] The total number is unknown but has been estimated to be between 2,000–3,000.[1]

      Government photography of native delegations to Washington began in the 1860s and 1870s, with Smithsonian geologist Ferdinand V. Hayden requesting in 1874 for the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to send delegations to his office to be photographed.[8] The frequency of delegations increased over the early course of Gill's photographic career, peaking in the winter during congressional sessions.[7] They were generally not paid, although Apache chief Geronimo successfully demanded payment from Gill before shooting, having set prices for portrait sittings.[1]

      Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, ordered that native delegations should be photographed without headdresses so that the "configuration of the head" could be recorded.[1] William Henry Holmes, succeeding Powell as Chief of the BAE in 1902, also emphasized the "anthropometric elements" of the photographs, placing items with known sizes around subjects in order to allow for facial and cranial measurements to be taken. However, as ethnographic and historical purposes were increasingly pursued, subjects were often depicted with headdresses, wearing native dress and holding tools or artifacts associated with their tribe. Occasionally, subjects were given clothing that was anachronistic or from other tribes. Gill photographed all studio subjects in a "mug-shot" approach, with head-and-shoulders profile and front-facing shots. However, full body shots were also taken, usually of subjects in traditional clothing.[1]

      Prior to 1904, native delegations were photographed at the Downtown offices of the BAE; however, the walk downtown was disliked by many in the delegations, who preferred to stay in the vicinity of the Smithsonian.[8] The studio was later moved to the upper floor of the Smithsonian's National Museum Building (now the Arts and Industries Building).[1] Members of delegations were spotted and taken to the studio by Andrew John, a Seneca man living in Washington at Beveridge House, a popular boardinghouse for native delegations. Benjamin Beveridge, the establishment's owner, was himself hired to deliver native guests to the BAE following Andrew John's death in 1907. When Beveridge died in 1910, the boardinghouse closed, and photographs stored there were given to Bureau custody.[8]

      Gill occasionally took field photography of Native Americans in addition to his studio portraiture. He visited the Pamunkey Reservation in 1899 to photograph tribal members. The following year, he partnered with William John McGee on an expedition to Arizona and New Mexico, photographing members of the Akimel O'odham, Cocopah, Seri, and Tohono Oʼodham.[1] During this expedition he named Klotho's Temple, one of the Muggins Mountains of southwestern Arizona.[9] During the 1900s and 1910s, he also accompanied Holmes to document Native American archaeological sites in Maryland, Oklahoma, and Missouri.[1]

      A fourteen cent United States postage stamp showing a Native American man with a feather headdress looking left, below which a caption reads "AMERICAN INDIAN".
      American Indian fourteen-cent stamp, 1923, based on a portrait of Hollow Horn Bear taken by Gill

      Many notable Native American figures were photographed by Gill, including the delegation sent to Washington, D.C. during the second inauguration of Theodore Roosevelt. He described the Nez Perce Chief Joseph, photographed on several occasions, as having "the dignity of a court justice [...] an air of gentleness and quiet reserve."[1] In one 1903 sitting, Gill asked for a totem mark (a glyph substituting for a signature) from Joseph. He instead fully signed his name, alongside the year 1900. Joseph ignored protests from Gill regarding the incorrect date, claiming it was exactly how he was taught to sign by a friend.[7][1]

      Gill's photography prominently featured in Smithsonian publications during his career, such as Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico and posthumously in the Handbook of North American Indians.[1] His 1905 portrait of Hollow Horn Bear was used on a fourteen-cent postage stamp in 1923.[10] Displays of his prints were shown at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition, the Panama–California Exposition, and at various public libraries.[1]

      Due to Gill's worsening eyesight, many of his photography duties with the Smithsonian were transferred to A. J. Olmsted in 1926,[1] although he continued to be involved with portrait photography in a limited capacity. During this period he continued work as illustration editor for various bureaus of the Smithsonian, including the United States National Museum in addition to the BAE.[1] In October 1931 he photographed Crazy Bull, grandson of Sitting Bull; this would be one of his last photographs taken for the Bureau.[7]

      A portrait of Chief Joseph facing left, wearing a feathered headdress.
      Portrait of Chief Joseph by Gill, 1900

      Critique

      Gill's early portraits, especially full-body and group photographs, have been characterized as unartistic. Gill worked within the ethnographic, historical, and anthropometric demands of the BAE alongside his own artistic goals. His full-length portraits of subjects often featured stiff poses, serving mainly to document clothing rather than the subject themselves.[1]

      However, his closer-framed portraits showing just the head and shoulders of the subject exhibited great artistic efforts and saw significant improvement over the course of his early career, with the earlier work in this respect described as "crowded" and "ill-framed". He would take great care to edit pieces for prints and publication: his portrait of Wolf Robe was "cropped into a strong design which featured little more than the Indian's striking face and head with the two feathers running off the edge of the paper."[1] This later work has been described as romantic and pictorialist in its composition, inspired by contemporary photography of Native Americans by Edward S. Curtis.[11]

      Gill has been criticized for anachronistic and outdated clothing he gave to subjects to wear, some possibly sourced from Smithsonian collections. In over a dozen cases, subjects from the same delegation were shown with the same clothing and props, including one where four Dakota were pictured wearing the same headdress. In one photograph, a Kickapoo subject is shown wearing Blackfoot leggings and a breechclout from the Iowa or Otoe. Such errors were shared by contemporary photographers of Native Americans such as Curtis.[1]

      Personal life

      Gill married his first wife, Rose DeLima Draper, on May 25, 1881.[12] They had six children before Rose Gill died in 1893,[1] including Robert Gill, a major in the Corps of Engineers.[2] He married fellow Smithsonian illustrator Mary Irwin Wright on August 19, 1895 and with her had Minna P. Gill, a suffragist and librarian.[13] They divorced in 1903, although they continued business relations for some years afterwards.[1] On January 2, 1905 he married Katharine Schley Hemmick,[14] with whom he had one child.[1]

      Gill was an active cyclist and during the 1880s served as a team captain of the Capital Bicycle Club, an early American cyclists' organization. He was later a member of the Cosmos Club, Society of Washington Artists,[1] and the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of the District of Columbia.[15] He taught painting classes at the Corcoran School of Art and the Art Students League of Washington[5] and collected antique art, including rugs and East Asian porcelain.[1]

      Following retirement from the Smithsonian, Gill moved from Washington to Alexandria, Virginia.[1] He died on August 31, 1940, fracturing his skull after falling down a staircase at his home.[15]

      References

      1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Glenn, J. R. (1983). "De Lancey W. Gill: Photographer for the Bureau of American Ethnology". History of Photography. 7 (1): 7–22. doi:10.1080/03087298.1983.10442742.
      2. 1 2 "Major Robert Gill Arrives to Instruct 105th Engineers". The Charlotte News. May 16, 1939. p. 10.
      3. 1 2 Miller, Cheryl (1992). "DeLancey Gill's 100-Year-Old Capital City". Washington History. 4 (1): 90–91. JSTOR 40065276 – via JSTOR.
      4. ↑ "Gallery and Studio". The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. February 9, 1890. p. 7.
      5. 1 2 3 Cosentino, Andrew J. (1983). The Capital Image: Painters in Washington, 1800–1915. Smithsonian Institution Press. pp. 218–219, 260. ISBN 9780874743371.
      6. ↑ Eldredge, Charles C. (1986). Art in New Mexico, 1900–1945: Paths to Taos and Santa Fe. Abbeville Press. ISBN 9780896595996.
      7. 1 2 3 4 5 Fleming, Paula Richardson; Luskey, Judith (1986). The North American Indians in Early Photographs. Harper & Row. pp. 178–179. ISBN 9780060155490.
      8. 1 2 3 Viola, Herman J. (1981). Diplomats in Buckskins: A History of Indian Delegations in Washington City. Washington, D.C: Smithsonian Institution Press. pp. 184–185. ISBN 9780874749441.
      9. ↑ Leatham, Kyle (June 6, 1965). "Clotho's Temple". Arizona Days and Ways Magazine. pp. 18–19.
      10. ↑ "Hollow Horn Bear". Smithsonian National Postal Museum. Archived from the original on September 27, 2023. Retrieved September 27, 2023.
      11. ↑ Weidman, Paul (May 18, 2012). "Native American Portraits". The Santa Fe New Mexican. pp. Z036.
      12. ↑ "District Brevities". National Republican. May 26, 1881. p. 4. Archived from the original on September 28, 2023. Retrieved September 28, 2023.
      13. ↑ "Social Movements". The Evening Times. August 22, 1895. p. 5. Archived from the original on September 27, 2023. Retrieved September 27, 2023.
      14. ↑ "In the Circle of Society". The Washington Times. January 4, 1905. p. 6.
      15. 1 2 "De Lancey Gill, 81, Noted Ethnologist, Dies After Fall". Washington Evening Star. September 1, 1940. p. 8. Archived from the original on November 14, 2022. Retrieved October 2, 2023.
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