{{Short description|English-Canadian photographer (1838–1914)}} {{Infobox artist | name = Frederick Dally | image = Frederick Dally in 1870.jpg | imagesize = | caption = Frederick Dally in 1870 | birth_name = | birth_date = {{birth date|1838|07|29}} | birth_place = Southwark, London, England | death_date = {{death date and age|1914|7|28|1838|07|29}} | death_place = Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England | field = Photographer }} '''Frederick Dally''' (July 29, 1838 – July 28, 1914) was an English Canadian portrait and landscape photographer best known for his views of the Cariboo goldfields in British Columbia.
==Early life and Victoria== He was born on July 29, 1838, in Southwark, a district of London, England, the youngest of nine children. Educated at Christ's Hospital, London, he served an apprenticeship with a linen and woollen draper.<ref name="Schwartz">{{cite web|last1=Schwartz|first1=Joan|title=Frederick Dally|url=http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/frederick-dally/|website=The Canadian Encyclopedia|access-date=13 September 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304094135/http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/frederick-dally/|archive-date=4 March 2016|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Roy-Sole 59">Roy-Sole (2008), p.59.</ref> At the age of 24, Dally emigrated to British North America, arriving in Victoria on the Colony of Vancouver Island in September 1862.<ref name="Mattison">{{cite web|last1=Mattison|first1=David|title=Dally, Frederick|url=https://cameraworkers.davidmattison.com/getperson.php?personID=I266&tree=cw18581950|website=Camera Workers: The British Columbia, Alaska & Yukon Photographic Directory, 1858–1950|access-date=13 September 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160629145727/https://cameraworkers.davidmattison.com/getperson.php?personID=I266&tree=cw18581950|archive-date=29 June 2016|url-status=live}}</ref> He opened up a dry goods store, and a few years later he sold his stock and set up a photographic gallery in June 1866.<ref name="Roy-Sole 59"/><ref name="Mattison"/><ref name="Greenhill 55">Greenhill (1965), p.55.</ref> His commissions for photography in Victoria were varied, encompassing portraits of prominent citizens, public buildings, and street scenes,<ref name="Schwartz"/> and he sometimes took pictures at the request of the Colonial Office.<ref name="Roy-Sole 59"/> He also documented the presence of the government and that of the Royal Navy.<ref name="Schwartz"/> An acquaintance was the photographer and assayist Francis George Claudet, son of the fashionable London photographer Antoine Claudet, who was in Canada for the Royal Mint.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mattison |first1=David |title=Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Photography |date=2013 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=9781135873271 |pages=304–5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yVFdAgAAQBAJ&q=%22francis+george+claudet%22+1837&pg=PA305 |access-date=20 April 2021}}</ref> A focal point of Dally's business was marketing cartes de visites of First Nations people, including both studio and field images.<ref>Savard (2010), p. 69.</ref>{{efn|Dally produced seventy-seven (or possibly seventy-eight) cartes de visite of First Nations people. Blackman further remarks that he was the most productive as well as the most skillful of the Victoria carte-makers.<ref>Blackman (1986), p. 71.</ref>}}
==Field excursions== In August 1866, Dally accompanied the governor of Vancouver Island, Arthur Edward Kennedy, aboard HMS ''Scout'' on its circumnavigation tour of Vancouver Island with stops to inspect local villages.<ref name="Greenhill 55"/><ref name="Roy-Sole 60">Roy-Sole (2008), p. 60.</ref> On the west coast, he only managed to produce two negatives, but on the eastern side he had better results, photographing at Fort Rupert, Comox, Cowichan, and Nanaimo.<ref name="Mattison and Savard 275">Mattison and Savard (1992), pp. 274–275.</ref> At Cowichan he took a pair of photographs of salmon weirs which are the earliest examples known.<ref>Savard (2010), pp. 85–87.</ref> In a view taken in the same locality, the full range of Dally's compositional powers can be seen in his depiction of a Coast Salish Quamichan village.<ref>Mattison and Savard (1992), p. 275.</ref><ref>Thomas (1982), p. 67.</ref>
[[File:Quamichan village near outlet of the Cowichan River.jpg|right|thumb|Quamichan village near the Cowichan River, 1866.]] Two years later in 1868, he made a month-long trip up the Cariboo Road to the gold-rush town of Barkerville, photographing the route as well as the mining claims.<ref name="Schwartz"/><ref name="Greenhill 55"/> The following year he returned to Barkerville, this time building a studio, only to see it destroyed a few weeks later in the fire that engulfed the town on September 16, 1868.<ref name="Roy-Sole 60"/> Dally's manuscript is the only surviving written account of the disaster.<ref>Waite (2015), p. 100.</ref> Less than two months later he was back in Victoria, where he continued to photograph until September 1870 when he sold his gallery to the Green Brothers, a local firm.<ref name="Mattison"/> Sometime thereafter, his glass-plate negatives and probably his stock of prints passed into the hands of the Victoria photographers Richard and Hannah Maynard, who then sold Dally's images under their own imprints.<ref>Savard (2000), p. 7.</ref>
==Later years== Dally left Victoria in 1870 to study dentistry in Philadelphia, and two years later, he returned to England, where he practiced dental surgery until his retirement at age 71. His interest in British Columbia never waned, and he offered his expertise and collections to the Royal Geographical Society and the British Museum.<ref name="Roy-Sole 60"/> In 1883 he presented an album of his British Columbia views to Queen Victoria.<ref>{{cite web|title=Photographic Views of British Columbia 1867 to 1870|url=https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/2368804-a/photographic-views-of-british-columbia-1867-to-1870|website=Royal Collection Trust|access-date=14 September 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304062304/https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/2368804-a/photographic-views-of-british-columbia-1867-to-1870|archive-date=2016-03-04|url-status=live}}</ref> He died in Wolverhampton on July 28, 1914.<ref name="Schwartz"/>
==Reputation== Dally is considered to have taken some of the finest Canadian photographs of the 1860s, and in particular his work in the Cariboo goldfields and Barkerville is thought to be outstanding.<ref>Greenhill (1965), p. 54–55.</ref> According to the foremost authority on Dally, Joan Schwartz, "his visual record of the beginnings of British Columbia surpassed those of his contemporaries in artistic ability, technical skill and market appeal."<ref>Schwartz quoted in Roy-Sole (2008), p. 59.</ref> Many of his views were used as the basis of engravings for the pictorial press,<ref name="Schwartz"/> and his photographs of wagons being pulled by ten-mule teams over the Cariboo Road have been used to illustrate books on the history of British Columbia.<ref>Savard (2010), p. 15.</ref>
==Gallery== <gallery> File:Officers of HMS Sutlej 1860s LAC 3402174.jpeg|Officers and crew of ''HMS Sutlej.'' 1866–1869. File:Looking North On Wharf Street From Fort Street, Victoria.jpg|Looking north on Wharf street from Fort street, Victoria. 1866–1870. File:Member of the Songhees First Nation.jpg|Member of the Songhees First Nation. 1866–1870. File:Salmon weir at Quamichan Village on the Cowichan River, Vancouver Island.jpg|Salmon weir on the Cowichan River. 1866. File:Totem poles at Comox.jpg|Totem poles, Comox. 1866. File:Yale Branch, Barnard's Express (15407691486).jpg|Barnard's Express, Yale. 1867–1868. File:First Nations chief's grave at Chapman's Bar, Fraser River.jpg|First Nations chief's grave at Chapman's Bar, Fraser River. 1867–1868. File:Salmon caches on the Fraser River.jpg|Salmon caches on the Fraser River. 1868. File:On the Cariboo road.jpg|On the Cariboo Road. 1867–1868. File:Cariboo Road along the Fraser River canyon.jpg|Freight wagons along the Thompson River, 1867–1868. File:Barkerville's Hotel de France.jpg|Barkerville's Hotel de France. 1867–1868. File:Alturas Gold Mining Company, Stout's Gulch, Lowhee Creek.jpg|Alturas Gold Mining Company, Stout's Gulch, Lowhee Creek. 1867–1868. File:The Never-Sweat Company tunnel, Williams Creek.jpg|The Never-Sweat Company tunnel, Williams Creek. 1867–1868. File:Barkerville after the great fire.jpg|Barkerville after the great fire. September 17, 1868. File:Members Of First Legislature After The Union Of The Two Colonies, In Front Of Birdcages, Victoria.jpg|Members of the First Legislature after the Union of the Two Colonies, in front of The Birdcages, Victoria. 1870. </gallery>
==Notes== {{Notelist}}
==Citations== {{reflist|3}}
==Sources== *{{cite journal|last1=Blackman|first1=Margaret|title=Studio Indians: Cartes de visite of Native People in British Columbia, 1862–1872|journal=Archivaria|date=1986|volume=21|pages=68–86}} *{{cite book|last1=Greenhill|first1=Ralph|title=Early Photography in Canada|date=1965|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Toronto}} *{{cite journal|last1=Mattison|first1=David|last2=Savard|first2=Daniel|title=The North-west Pacific Coast: Photographic Voyages 1866–81|journal=History of Photography|date=1992|volume=16|pages=268–288|doi=10.1080/03087298.1992.10442558}} *{{cite journal|last1=Roy-Sole|first1=Monique|title=Edge of the Empire|journal=Canadian Geographic|date=2008|volume=128|pages=58–66}} *{{cite journal|last1=Savard|first1=Daniel|title=The Viewfinder: The Collectible Cabinet Card|journal=Discovery|publisher=Royal British Columbia Museum|date=2000|volume=27|page=7}} *{{cite book|last1=Savard|first1=Daniel|title=Images from the Likeness House|date=2010|publisher=Royal British Columbia Museum|location=Victoria|isbn=978-0-7726-6150-0}} *{{cite journal|last1=Thomas|first1=Alan|title=Photography of the Indian: Concept and Practice on the Northwest Coast|journal=BC Studies|date=1982|volume=52|pages=61–85}} *{{cite book|last1=Waite|first1=Donald E.|title=British Columbia and Yukon Gold Hunters: A History in Photographs|date=2015|publisher=Heritage House Publishing|location=Victoria|isbn=978-1772030778}}
==External links== {{Commons category}} *{{Cite web|url=http://www.barkerville.com/vol10/bville_burns.html|last1=Dally|first1=Frederick|title=The Great Fire of Barkerville – 1868|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150923182312/http://www.barkerville.com/vol10/bville_burns.html|archive-date=23 September 2015|url-status=live}} *[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haQMZPD3mlI The Frederick Dally Collection] Royal BC Museum
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Dally, Frederick}} Category:1838 births Category:1914 deaths Category:People from Southwark Category:19th-century Canadian photographers Category:English emigrants to pre-Confederation British Columbia