Standard Petroleum Refinery, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania
c. 1865
Medium
stereoscopic albumen prints
Dimensions
image/sheet (each): 7.8 × 8 cm (3 1/16 × 3 1/8 in.) mount: 8.3 × 17.1 cm (3 1/4 × 6 3/4 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund
Accession Number
2017.93.8
Rights
Public Domain
Art Historical Context
This stereoscopic photograph, created around 1865 by Thomas H. Johnson, captures the Standard Petroleum Refinery in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, at a pivotal moment in American industrial history. Produced as pair of albumen prints mounted on a card, the image was designed to be viewed through a stereoscope, creating a striking three-dimensional effect that brought distant scenes vividly to life for 19th-century audiences. Such views offered viewers an immersive glimpse into the rapidly expanding oil industry, which had only begun a few years earlier with the nation’s first commercial well in near...
About the Artist
Thomas H. Johnson · 1860–1870
Thomas H. Johnson was an American artist active in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Working during a period of considerable vitality in American art — when landscape painting, genre scenes, and printmaking were all flourishing — Johnson contributed to a visual culture that was expanding rapidly alongside the nation itself. The specifics of Johnson's training are not fully documented, th...