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The Prints of
Henry P. Bosse


Mechanic's Rock, Des Moines Rapids
Background photo from "The Bluffs at Trempealeau, Wis., Looking Upstream, 1885."

Discovering Henry Bosse's Mississippi

Forgotten in the library of a long-past Chief of Engineers, stowed in the pilot house of a dredge boat, set aside in the Clock Tower Building of a Corps of Engineers headquarters, lay the works of one of the Mississippi River's greatest photographers - Henry P. Bosse.
For one-hundred years, the artist remained unknown. Then, in the Spring of 1990, a Washington, D.C., antique dealer discovered an album of Bosse's images in the study house that belonged to Major General Alexander Mackenzie. General Mackenzie had been the Corps' Chief of Engineers, or top ranking officer, from 1904 to 1908. Within a year, this album would be worth over a million dollars and Bosse praised as one of the late nineteenth century's finest photographers.


Minneiska, Minn., 1885 When Bosse arrived in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1875, the upper Mississippi still possessed most of its natural features. It had uncounted side channels, backwaters, snags, sandbars and wide shallows, which delayed, stranded and sometimes sank steamboats.

Henry Bosse and the Corps of Engineers

Shortly after discovering the album, the antique dealer called the Corps of Engineers. He called because the album's frontispiece read: Views on the Mississippi River, from negatives taken and printed under the direction of Major A. Mackenzie, Corps of Engineers, U.S.A. by H. Bosse, Draughtsman, 1883-1891. The album held 169 large, oval, blue or cyanotype photographs and documented the Corps' early work on the Upper Mississippi River.

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Queen's Bluff, 1885 "The majestic bluffs that overlook the river, along through this region, charm one with the grace and variety of their forms, and the soft beauty of their adornment. The steep verdant slope, whose base is at the water's edge, is topped by a lofty rampart of broken, turreted rocks, which are exquisitely rich and mellow in color -- mainly dark browns and dull greens, but splashed with other tints." -- Mark Twain - Life on the Mississippi

"Fabulous" and "Unbelievable"

When the antique dealer showed the album to exhibitors at a photographic fair in Washington, D.C., they were most interested in the album's artistic value. They found the cyanotypes "fabulous" and "unbelievable," and one offered him $20,000 for the album -- an unheard of price for the work of an unknown photographer. Believing the images to be much more valuable, he declined.


Lower Lock (Des Moines Rapids Canal, from below Lock Wall, 1891) Rather than assault the treacherous Des Moines Rapids directly, Corps engineers decided that it would be easier to build a canal paralleling the Mississippi. Begun on October 18, 1867, the project required ten years to complete. Opened in 1877, the Des Moines Rapids Canal served Upper Mississippi River Traffic until the fifty-mile-long reservoir formed by Keokuk and Hamilton Water Power Company lock and dam, completed in 1913, flooded it. Bosse's photographs of the canal and locks demonstrate his ability to present complex engineering subjects gracefully.

Another Discovery

Shortly afterwards, the Corps' St. Paul District located a similar album on the William A. Thompson, the Corps' principal dredge boat for the Upper Mississippi River. The frontispiece and most of the prints were identical -- the same subjects and the same oval images.
Engraved in gold letters on the hard leather cover were the words: "Presented to the U.S. Dredge, William A. Thompson by Mrs. William A. Thompson." William Thompson had worked for the Corps from 1878 until his death in 1925. He spent all 47 years on the Upper Mississippi River, 16 of them with Bosse at Rock Island, Illinois. Bosse may have given Thompson the album as a personal gift or as a working document. Thompson's widow apparently presented the album to the dredge about the time of its christening in 1937, and thereon it sailed for some fifty years.


Richtman's Quarry At Fountain City, Wis., 1891 To achieve the image he wanted, Bosse sometimes added elements to his photos. Note how he matched the horizontal line running off the bluff top by painting in the horizon line on the right.

The Piece de Resistance Discovery

The Rock Island District also found a collection of Bosse's work in its offices in the Clock Tower Building on the Rock Island Arsenal. Rock Island's collection is unique. Some images are bound and some are unbound; some are cyanotypes and some are not. Many of the photographs are oval, as in the other two albums, but others are rectangular. Some of the rectangular prints have concave or convex corners. Some of the oval images have a crocheted pattern or an ornate design around them; others have wavy lines radiating from the oval. In some photogrpahs, Bosse painted in clouds, horizon lines, and other features to complete his composition. Together, these images reveal a more complex artist than do the simpal oval prints.


Snagging Scene, 1885 Between River reaches, sandbars rose near to or broke the water's surface. The natural river undermined its banks, swallowing the rocks, soil and trees that fell into it, giving birth to new hazards. George Merrick, in Old times on the Upper Mississippi, recounts that a steamboat pilot had to know the river so well that he could,

"on a night so perfectly black that the shore line is blotted out, run his boat within fifty feet of the shore and dodge snags, wrecks, overhanging trees, and all other obstacles by running the shape of the river as he knows it to be --
not as he can see it."

The Value of Bosse's Work

Certain that he had discovered a collection of truly exceptional photographs, the Washington antique dealer brought his album to Sotheby's auction house in New York. They could judge the value of Bosse's work. Sotheby's handles thousands of prints every year, most by world-renowned photographers. Sotheby's experts were struck by the clarity and artistic quality of Bosse's images and told the dealer that the collection ranked among the best nineteenth century works they had seen. Sotheby's estimated the album's value at $40,000 to $60,000, and it sold for $66,000 in their Fall 1990 sale.
After the auction, a San Francisco art dealer and one of the album's new owners claimed that he could sell the album immediately for $650,000 and that it would eventually be worth over a million dollars.


Fort Madison, IA., 1891 As Twain's steamboat paddled up the Mississippi River, the villages and cities he passed impressed him so that he wrote:

"We had a glimpse of Davenport, which is another city on a hill -- a phrase which applies to all these towns; for they are all comely, all well built, clean, orderly, pleasant to the eye, and cheering to the spirit; and they are all situated upon hills." -- Mark Twain - Life on the Mississippi

The Shift in American Photography

Affirming Bosse's talent and the art dealer's optimism, an expert at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History called Bosse's photographs "incredible, fantastic", and "truly extraordinary." That no one knows Bosse, she said, is surprising, given the quality of his work. She described his photogrpahs as exceptionally clear and modern and observed that they reveal the shift in American photography from romantic to industrial and geometric subjects.
Sotheby's further elevated Bosse's artistic stature in its Spring 1995 photographic catalogue. In the catalogue, Sotheby's photography department celebrated it twentieth anniversary, highlighting the most important discovery of each year. For 1990, it selected Henry P. Bosse's work.


Wagon Bridge At Winona, Minn., 1892 Bosse's images of railroad and wagon bridges further reveal his talent to present complex engineering subjects gracefully. It is believed Bosse was directed to photograph these bridges because their piers created a new peril for steamboats. Driven by strong winds or caught in tricky currents created by the piers - steamboats kept running into the bridges. And, at the time, the number of bridges was growing quickly.

More Than Art

Yet, Bosse's photographs are more than art. They chronicle the first systematic effort to recast the Upper Mississippi River from a natural river into a modern commercial highway. They present the River's working boats: the snagboats and dredges. They show the timber industry's steamboats, log rafts and milling centers that dominated the Upper River's commerce during the late nineteenth century.
They illustrate the railroad and wagon bridges, carrying the River's competition and whose piers created obstacles as dangerous as any offered by the River. Bosse's photographs feature the cities and towns taking root on the River's banks. Together, they comprise a rich essay on the evolution of one of the world's greatest Rivers -- The Mississippi.


Desoto, Wis., 1891 With population and agricultural output booming and with railroads threatening to monopolize bulk shipping, the Midwest pressed for more meaningful river improvements. River towns led the quest. Bosse photographed many of these towns. He captured some as pioneer villages, emphasizing their pastoral character. He filmed others as burgeoning commercial centers.

 
Photo Courtesy of Michael Conner

Henry P. Bosse Henry Peter Bosse, Corps of Engineers draughtsman, now ranks with America's most important nineteenth century photographers. He was born in Madgeburg, Prussia (a province of Germany), on November 13, 1844, on the estate of his distinguished grandfather, General Neithardt von Gneisenau. German historians credit Gneisenau with rallying the Prussian troops to help defeat Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo.

Henry Bosse spent his early years on his grandfather's estate, "where tutors fitted him for his studies at higher seats of learning. Besides his classical studies at Magdeburg, he studied engineering and art."

According to the 1900 Census, he arrived in the United States in 1865, when only 21 years old. The 1870 Census lists him as a resident of Chicago, where he operated a book and stationary shop with a fellow German immigrant. His career with the Corps began in 1874 and at the time of his death in 1903, he was the Rock Island District's chief draughtsman.

Last Update:August 09, 2007
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