17. [BIRD’S-EYE VIEW]. BRAZOS RIVER CHANNEL & DOCK COMPANY. [Title panel below] Velasco the First & Only Deep Water Port on the Coast of Texas. The Commercial Hope of the Trans-Mississippi. Louis Giraud C. E. & D.; [upper right] Map of the United States, Mexico and Central America, Showing the City of Velasco, at the Mouth of the Brazos River, and its Position with Reference to the Most Important Cities and Transportation Routes. (27.5 x 30.5 cm); [2 views at upper center: Victorian hotel and crowd scene + bucolic river scene with boat] [above] The “Velasco.” Velasco, Texas | Eugene T. Heiner Arch’t., Houston, Texas (17.7 x 23 cm) [below] Site of Velasco, July 1^st 1891 (10 x 23 cm); [bird’s-eye view of region showing the mouth of the Brazos, ships, and town plans of Velasco, Quintana, and Surfside] View of the Jetties at the Mouth of the Brazos River, Texas and of the City of Velasco and Surroundings. (57 x 32 cm); [lower left] Map of the City of Velasco, Brazoria Co. Texas. (29.1 x 40.5 cm); [lower left above neat line] Aug. Gast Bank Note & Litho. Company, Map Publishers, St. Louis; verso with 27 panels containing promotional and statistical text, printed in red and blue, one panel of which is map: Agricultural Map of Brazos Valley Wheat, Cotton, Cattle, Corn, Iron, Coal, Timber, Sugar, Railroads, Rivers, Deep Water. (19.9 x 9.1 cm). [St. Louis, ca. 1892]. Lithograph with original color. Neat line to neat line: 57 x 86 cm; overall sheet size: 60.5 x 91.7 cm. Creased where formerly folded, a few minor losses at folds, overall fine, with strong color. Very rare, large, and colorful promotional of Velasco.

            First edition. Not in Reps, Day, or other sources. The sister towns of Velasco and Quintana at the mouth of the Brazos River were the gateway through which Austin’s first colonists entered Texas in 1821. During the next fourteen years, more than 25,000 settlers entered Texas through Velasco. After the battle of San Jacinto, Velasco briefly served as temporary capital of the Republic of Texas. Velasco has been called the “Boston harbor of the Texas Revolution.” In 1875, a hurricane destroyed Velasco and the town site was virtually abandoned. In 1891, a new town site was laid out a few miles upstream from the Gulf of Mexico, and the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury opened the new port of Velasco. The present imprint was part of the campaign to promote Velasco’s deepwater port, which ran to a depth of 17-1/2 feet. By 1892, over a million dollars worth of lots had been sold. The town and region flourished, with railroad connections and a busy shipping center, quickly increasing to a population of 3,000 by 1900, when the catastrophic Galveston hurricane destroyed the town yet again. Eventually Velasco was incorporated with Freeport in 1957.

            This extravagant, unusual lithograph was prepared by August Gast, the St. Louis firm that produced so many late nineteenth-century maps of Texas, including the General Land Office County maps. Gast was also responsible for the lithographs in M. Whilldin’s, A Description of Western Texas, Published by the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railway Company, the Sunset Route (Galveston: Printed at the “News” Steam Book & Job Office, 1876). The bird’s-eye view of the region is rather mannered in an appealing way, the two scenic views are quite lovely and well done, and the plat map of Velasco is simple and skillful. The designer, apparently Louis Giraud, did not restrain himself on the lettering, which is quite varied and imaginative. According to The Law of Texas Now in Force... (compiled by William Alexander and published by Joseph A. Nagle at Austin in 1877), Louis Giraud was living in Bexar County in 1877 and served as a notary public. He was City Engineer in San Antonio from 1877 to 1879.

            The text on verso is an orgy of late nineteenth-century U.S. boosterism, with glowing descriptions of what is and what is to be. Velasco is referred to, among other things, as “The Liverpool of the Trans-Mississippi.” This phrase sums up the general tenor of the promotional: “The Trans-Mississippi’s Outlet to the World, the First and Only Deep Water Port West of the Mouth of the Mississippi River, the Only Harbor on the Texas, Private Capital and Energy vs. Government Money. No appropriations needed; none asked for; none wanted. No lighterage; no dangers; no delays. Pilotage and other port charges at Velasco 50 percent less than any other Gulf Port. For further particulars, address: The Brazos River Channel & Dock Co., Velasco, Texas.” ($1,500-3,000)

Kuchel & Dresel’s California Bird’s-Eye Views

Outstanding Examples of Lithographic Art from On-the-Spot Drawings during the Gold Rush, Printed in San Francisco

The California Gold Rush fascinated the whole world. Knowledge of that remote area of the world was obviously greatly limited in 1849, so that authors, publishers, emigration agents, and shipping lines rushed in to fill the void. Both written and visual media were brought to play to demonstrate to the armchair traveller and actual emigrant alike the dangers and possibilities of this new world where wealth could be picked up from almost any stream. Global visions aside, a certain regional pride in the small, relatively crude towns that sprang up wherever gold was found was also at work. Although fountains of ink were spilled describing events to audiences back East, in Europe, and elsewhere, visual depictions of the towns and working methods provided information that could hardly be conveyed by any other means. As Douglas S. Watson points out in his editor’s foreward to California in the Fifties (San Francisco, John Howell, 1936):

In our endeavor to recreate those golden days we turn to the fiction of Bret Harte with its characteristic scenes and figures or to Dame Shirley’s pictures of real life in the hurly-burly for the search for gold, but there is something missing. We cannot visualize the mise en scene. The stage setting is lacking. To see the ebb and flow of the life of that time in its actual surroundings is denied us, unless in fancy we can stand at the side of some artist while he pencil sketches it for us as we look on.... During the late Fifties, Kuchel and Dresel and others drew many a mining camp and California town on stone. From these, lithographic prints were made. Their excellence astounded the draftsmen of the older centers of the United States. Boston, New York and Philadelphia hailed the work of the westerners as outstanding examples of the lithographic art, and even today collectors and critics find good reason to prefer San Francisco lithographs of that period to those made at the same time on the eastern seaboard. In very few of our great libraries can there be found even incomplete files of these notable lithographic prints.

            The lithographs in the next six lots appeared in various forms as separates with or without vignettes surrounding the images, the latter format being used in an extraordinary album of thirty prints, Kuchel & Dresel’s California Views (published in San Francisco from 1855 to 1858). References to the album: Cowan I, pp. 133-134: “A series of large and very interesting views of California towns... Of their kind, these plates are the finest that have been issued in California. They were sold separately, and may yet occasionally be seen; but the collection of thirty issued in book form, with the specially printed title-page, was doubtless limited to a very small number, copies of which are excessively rare.” Cowan II, p. 337. Deák, Picturing America #699n (Vol. I, pp. 475-476). Libros Californianos (Dawson & Howell List), p. 31: “The most accurate delineations of the California mining towns and cities made in the 1850’s.” Peters, California on Stone, pp. 141-151. Streeter Sale 2787 (fetched $19,000 in 1968).

            Regarding the variations in the prints as to presence or absence of surrounding vignettes, Reps suggests that the views without vignettes, as found here, came first:

A high proportion of the Kuchel & Dresel views were issued in at least two states. One-probably the earlier-lacked vignettes. The other included vignettes bordering the principal view on two, three, or four sides, sometimes with two rows of them on two or more sides. It is on this second version that one finds a local publisher’s name far more often than on those without vignettes. Possibly Kuchel & Dresel relied on a local publisher to solicit subscriptions or collect fees from residents and merchants for having their buildings shown in vignettes. An artist for the firm-Kuchel himself in all probability-could then have come to the town, prepared the necessary sketches, and returned to San Francisco to add the vignettes on a revised edition that could be sold for additional profits” (Views and Viewmakers of Urban America, p. 54 & footnote 9).

            On the energetic firm of Kuchel & Dresel (active 1855-1859), Reps (Views and Viewmakers of Urban America, pp. 187-188) states:

Charles C. Kuchel and Emil Dresel formed a short-lived but highly productive partnership that resulted in the publication of fifty city views during the period 1855-1859. Except for seven of Oregon towns and single views of places in Washington and Nevada, all of these lithographs showed communities in California. The majority of these were mining camps and towns. These lithographs captured images of the Gold Rush settlements only a few years after their creation, and they provide incomparable records of their urban and architectural character.

Concerning Emil Dresel, little is known. He may have handled most of the business side of the firm’s activities, since Kuchel is known to have been an artist before the two came together and continued to do some work of this kind after the partnership terminated. Nevertheless, almost all of the prints include some version of the phrase drawn from nature and on stone by Kuchel & Dresel, and it is therefore possible that Dresel, too, participated in drawing and putting on stone the many views the two men produced.

Kuchel was born in Zweibrucken in 1820. As early as 1840 he was in Philadelphia working for P. S. Duval, and he remained with that firm until 1852. While with Duval, Kuchel drew and put on stone a view of San Francisco published in 1850 so misleading in its topographic details that Kuchel could not possibly have had any firsthand knowledge of the city. Perhaps he reached California by 1854, for in the following year the first four of the Kuchel & Dresel city views appeared.

These first views of Portland, Oregon, and Columbia, Mokelumne Hill, and Stockton, California, were printed-like all but a handful of the Kuchel & Dresel urban lithographs-at the San Francisco press of Britton & Rey. It is at least a possibility that Kuchel worked briefly for this company sometimes after its foundation in 1852 and before the beginning of his partnership with Dresel. In any event, the association between the two partnerships was extremely close, and the prints that reached the market as a result reflect an ideal match of artistic ability and printing skills.... [lengthy useful discussion follows, concluding] The lithograph images...offer straightforward impressions of California mining towns, although spruced up as if sitting for a formal portrait. Almost always one sees the towns from some distance and from a viewpoint only slightly elevated above the horizon....

Although my search of the major print collections in California and of those elsewhere known to me to have substantial California holdings was reasonably thorough, there are doubtless many variant impressions of Kuchel & Dresel views yet to be recorded. A study concentrating only on these views and intended to be definitive would be as rewarding as it would be arduous.... While one encounters many of these views in both institutional and private collections with hand coloring added, most or all of them came from the Britton & Rey press only in black and white with a single buff tone stone to accentuate ground shadows and provide cloud effects. I have not seen any that were printed in color, although a number of the Kuchel & Dresel prints are known to me only through photographs.

            Dr. Hart (Companion to California, p. 52) discusses the firm of Britton & Rey (active 1851-1902): “The firm of [Britton & Rey] in San Francisco (1852-92), the oldest west of the Rocky Mts., also engaged in printing, engraving, and decoration on tin. The senior partner, Joseph Britton (1820-1901), was a Yorkshireman who went to California in 1849. His brother-in-law, Jacques Joseph Rey (1820-92), an Alsatian, joined him in other businesses, including some financing of the dirigible of Frederick Marriott. Britton was also active as a Supervisor in San Francisco on the People’s Party ticket and as a financier of Hallidie’s first cable car line.” See also Peters’ long article (California on Stone, pp. 62-89 & plate 1), in which he refers to Britton & Rey as “the Currier & Ives of the West.”

The present bird’s-eye views are early (and sometimes the first or the only) nineteenth-century views of the towns depicted.

Auction 21 Abstracts