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John H. Fitzgibbon
John H. Fitzgibbon
1883
Book page
Google Books
LL/36168
Richard Smith Elliott Notes Taken in Sixty Years (St. Louis, MO.: R.P. Studley & Co., 1883), p.204
The amount of cheap pleasure afforded by photography is incalculable. Adonis can have his Lilly's pretty face for his pocketbook at a cost so small as to be almost contemptible; but only a little over forty years ago her painted miniature would have been too dear for his purse. Among the first cities of the world to enjoy the results of Daguerre's art was St. Louis, as a gallery was established by John H. Fitzgibbon in 1841, only two years after the French had made the process public. This excellent man went to his rest in 1882, but the St. Louis Photographer, a monthly journal founded by him, is continued under Mrs. Fitzgibbon, and is the exponent of photographic art for the great valley.
Fitzgibbon.
Long years ago he drew
The magic pictures by the sun's assistance;
The art was then so curious and so new,
We wonder'd it had come so great a distance.
With such perfection and a touch so true.
For scarce Daguerre had thrown
His wond'rous process open to the nations,
When here on Mississippi's banks 'twas known,
By our Fitzgibbon's dext'rous ministrations,
And portraits in our cabinets were shown
My infant darlings then
Were taken off with marvellous precision;
Though long since women grown and men,
I see them smiling in a happy vision,
As if their childhood were all back again.
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