Processed by
Pamela Tranfield
January 1998
Revised by Dorothy Nicholson
4 June 2004
Manuscript and Visual Collections Department
William Henry Smith Memorial Library
Indiana Historical Society
450 West Ohio Street
Indianapolis, IN 46202-3269
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VOLUME OF |
1 box of photographs, 3 boxes of oversized photographs |
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COLLECTION |
Ca. 1884–ca. 1934 |
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PROVENANCE: |
Charles Latham, Jr., Indianapolis, 1993 and 1996 |
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RESTRICTIONS: |
None |
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COPYRIGHT: |
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REPRODUCTION |
Permission to reproduce or publish material in this collection must be obtained from the Indiana Historical Society. |
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ALTERNATE |
None |
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RELATED |
None |
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ACCESSION |
1993.0149, 1996.0625 |
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NOTES: |
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Josephine Parker (Sharpe) Latham (1892-1988), the daughter of Joseph Kinne Sharpe, Jr., and Alberta Johnson Sharpe (d. 1911) was born in Indianapolis, Ind. Educated in private schools, she studied piano for many years, notably with Charles Anthony and Rudolf Reuter. She married Indianapolis builder Charles Latham ca. 1915. The couple had one child in 1917, Charles Latham, Jr. Mrs. Latham was a founding member of the Indianapolis Symphony Society and the Indianapolis Garden Club, and a trustee of the John Herron Art Institute.
Born 6 May 1917, Charles Latham, Jr. received his early education at Public School 27 and Park School (later Park Tudor) in Indianapolis. He graduated from Princeton University in 1939 and Harvard University in 1940. Latham taught at private schools in Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania before returning to reside in Indianapolis in 1982. He retired to New Hampshire in 1996.
Joseph Kinne Sharpe, Jr. (1853-1920) was an inventor of agricultural machinery. Born in Indianapolis to Joseph K. Sharpe and Mary Ellen Graydon Sharpe, Joseph Sharpe, Jr., developed products for the Indiana Manufacturing Company. Sharpe married Alberta Johnson in 1891 and the union produced one child, Josephine Parker Sharpe.
Julia Graydon Sharpe (ca. 1857-1939), the second child of Joseph K. Sharpe and Mary Ellen Graydon Sharpe, was born in Indianapolis and educated at private schools in Indianapolis and Philadelphia. She attended the Indiana School of Art from 1878 to 1880, specializing in drawing. She studied with T. C. Steele and William Forsyth from 1894 to 1896 and attended the Art Students League of New York from 1896 to 1897. Sharpe was a member of the Second Presbyterian Church, the Home for Aged Women (later the Indianapolis Retirement Home) and the Daughters of the American Revolution (Caroline Scott Harrison Chapter).
Winant (Wijant) Pullis Johnston (ca. 1890-ca. 1855) was a personal friend of the Sharpe family. He was born in Indianapolis and received a degree in agriculture from the University of Pennsylvania. During the First World War Johnston was a pioneer in aerial reconnaissance. He published a novel, Eyelids of the Morn, in 1929.
American pictorialist photographer Clarence H. (Hudson) White (1871-1925) was a contemporary of Alfred Stieglitz. White was a founder of the Camera Club of New York, an organization that sought to elevate the standards of pictorial photography in the United States. Characteristics of pictorial photographs include a soft focus, lack of definition, and extreme shades of light and dark. White was a lecturer at Teachers College (Columbia) in New York in 1907 and later taught at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. He organized the Summer School of Photography at Seguinland, Maine, in 1910 and the Clarence H. White School of Photography in 1914.
Nicholson Bros. operated a photography studio at 1014 North Pennsylvania Avenue in Indianapolis from ca. 1899 to ca. 1936. Indianapolis photographer Henry P. Dexheimer operated a studio in Marion, Indiana from at least 1892 to ca. 1914, and at various locations in Indianapolis from ca. 1918 to ca. 1935. After 1935 the company is listed in Polk’s Indianapolis Directory as Dexheimer-Carlon Studios.
Sources:
Items in the collection.
Indiana State Symphony Society Records, 1931–1988 (M 0614), Indiana Historical Society Library.
Joseph Kinne Sharpe, Jr. Collection (SC 2535), Indiana Historical Society Library.
Julia Graydon Sharpe Collection (M 0673), Indiana Historical Society Library.
Latham, Charles, Jr., letter to Pamela Tranfield (Visual Collections Archivist) 16 January 1998.
Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1982. General Collection: TR15 .N47 1982.
Polk’s Indianapolis Directory, 1918-1935. Indianapolis: R. L. Polk and Co., 1918-1935. General Collection: F534 .I55 A18.
Thompson, Donald E. Indiana Authors and Their Books, 1917-1966. Crawfordsville: Wabash College, 1974. General Collection: Z1281 .B31 1974.
Winant (Wijant) P. Johnston Collection (SC 2458), Indiana Historical Society Library.
The collection includes portraits and snapshots of Mrs. Charles Latham (nee Josephine Parker Sharpe) of Indianapolis and some of her family and friends. The collection contains examples of pictorialist photography by renowned photographer Clarence H. White, and Nicholson Bros. of Indianapolis. Charles Latham, Jr., donated the photographs to the Indiana Historical Society in 1993 and 1996.
Mr. Latham identified childhood portraits of his mother by her maiden name “Josephine Parker Sharpe” in images made between 1899 and ca. 1916. He identified her as “Mrs. Charles Latham” in photographs made after ca. 1916. Latham differentiated between titles used by unmarried and married women, a reflection of the Latham families’ personal practice. The processor made use of these terms in the arrangement of the photographs into three series.
Series 1: Josephine Parker Sharpe contains portrait photographs of Josephine’s childhood and early adult years. Nicholson Bros. photographed Josephine Parker Sharpe as a child of about seven years of age in 1899, at eleven years of age in 1903, and at about age fourteen in 1906, and age 23 in 1915.
The photographs made ca. 1899 show Josephine in eighteenth century dress with Eleanor Hurd and two small boys, John and Donald Jameson. In 1903 Josephine posed playfully for Nicholson in a flowered dress with a large straw hat decorated with roses. The contrast between these photographs of the playful child and images made three years later underline Josephine’s transformation from child to young woman. The images made in 1906 are soft-toned, head-and-shoulder poses. Josephine wears a crisp, pleated midi dress, and her hair is tied behind her head in a large bow. She is also shown dressed in a fur hat, coat, stole, and muff with her hair pinned under a hat. The large hair bow and midi dress reflect that Josephine is not yet an adult, yet the fur hat and accessories elevate her to a status above that of a small child.
Contrasted with the more conventional work by Nicholson are her portraits made in 1905 by Clarence White. Josephine is shown in the idealized manner used by pictorial photographers of the time. She is posed as if in a painting and her expression is pensive and distant. The White photographs are works of art. The focus of the camera is soft, and the images resemble a charcoal drawing.
Another stylistic departure is shown in the Matzene photographs about 1915. These images have a pictorialist look but are more glamorous in nature. Josephine Sharpe is posed by a window in a room at her home on North Delaware. She wears a delicate white dress and smiles warmly at the camera. Her relaxed bearing in the photographs is in contrast to the more controlled demeanor expressed in photographs made by Nicholson Bros. of Indianapolis.
Series 2: Mrs. Charles Latham and Charles Latham, Jr. contains Josephine in a series of portraits by the Nicholson Bros. In 1918 the portraits show her at home (220 East 15th Street, Indianapolis) with her son Charles Latham, Jr., (about ten months of age). Mother, son, and the family dog (Rennie) sit together in the soft light of a window. The Nicholson Bros. also made portraits of Charles Latham, Jr., as an infant in 1917 and as a small child in 1920. The latter series of photographs show Charles dressed in white kid boots, an embroidered blouse, long hair, and short pants. He stands beside a window holding or pushing a toy locomotive. The last photograph in this series is totally different: Josephine Latham in hat and suit displays none of the dreamy quality of the previous images.
Series 3: Latham Family, Friends, and Residences includes various friends and Latham family members. There are two portraits of Joseph K. Sharpe, Jr., a hand-colored photograph of Julia Graydon Sharpe, ca. 1905, and a portrait of Annabelle Voorhees Brown (Mrs. Austin H. Brown) made by the Gilmore Studio of Indianapolis in 1925. One family friend Winant (Wijant) Pullis Johnston as a young man posed for Dexheimer Studios in about 1919. In this portrait he wears his military uniform and bares a distant, brooding expression.
Other photographs include an image of a young woman, possibly Eleanor Latham Smith (ca. 1875-1943), feeding a small dog on a vine-covered porch, ca. 1890. A cabinet card showing students of May Wright Sewall’s Girl’s Classical School (ca. 1884) includes Miss Smith in the second row, second from the left. The Marion County Seminary is depicted in a copy photograph by J. W. Pendergast of Indianapolis. Snapshots in the collection consist of an image of a floral bower erected for the wedding of Lydia Latham to Leroy C. Brewnig in 1909, and a view of a duplex apartment building at 1232-1234 N. Alabama Street.
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CONTENTS |
CONTAINER |
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Josephine Parker Sharpe with
Eleanor Hurd, and John and Donald Jameson in costume, ca. 1899 |
Photographs, |
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Josephine Parker Sharpe in straw
hat, ca. 1903 |
Photographs, |
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Josephine Parker Sharpe in straw hat, ca. 1903 |
OVA Photographs, |
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Josephine Parker Sharpe 1905; |
OVB Photographs, |
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Josephine Parker Sharpe 1905; |
OVB Photographs, |
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Josephine Parker Sharpe 1905; |
OVB Photographs, |
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Josephine Parker Sharpe, ca. 1906 [6 photographs] |
Photographs, |
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Josephine Parker Sharpe at 1314 N.
Delaware, |
OVB Photographs, |
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Josephine Parker Sharpe, at 1314
N. Delaware, |
OVB Photographs, |
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Josephine Parker Sharpe, ca. 1915;
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Photographs, |
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Josephine Parker Sharpe, ca. 1915; |
OVA Photographs, |
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CONTENTS |
CONTAINER |
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Mrs. Charles Latham, ca. 1918 |
Photographs, |
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Mrs. Charles Latham, ca. 1918 |
OVA Photographs, |
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Charles Latham, Jr., ca. 1917 |
OVA Photographs, |
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Mrs. Charles Latham, Charles
Latham, Jr., ca. 1918 |
Photographs, |
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Mrs. Charles Latham, Charles Latham, Jr., ca. 1918 |
OVA Photographs, |
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Mrs. Charles Latham, Charles Latham, Jr., ca. 1918 |
OVA Photographs, |
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Mrs. Charles Latham, Charles Latham, Jr., ca. 1918 |
OVA Photographs, |
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Mrs. Charles Latham, Charles Latham, Jr., ca. 1918 |
OVA Photographs, |
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Mrs. Charles Latham, Charles Latham, Jr., ca. 1918 |
OVA Photographs, |
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Mrs. Charles Latham, Charles Latham, Jr., ca. 1918 |
OVA Photographs, |
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Mrs. Charles Latham, Charles Latham, Jr., ca. 1918 |
OVA Photographs, |
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Mrs. Charles Latham, Charles Latham, Jr., ca. 1918 |
OVA Photographs, |
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Charles Latham, Jr., ca. 1920 [4 photographs] |
Photographs, |
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Mrs. Charles Latham, ca. 1925 [Bachrach Studios] |
OVA Photographs, |
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CONTENTS |
CONTAINER |
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Joseph Kinne Sharpe, Jr. |
OVA Photographs, |
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Joseph Kinne Sharpe, Jr. |
OVA Photographs, |
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[Julia G. Sharpe, ca. 1905, hand colored] |
Photographs, |
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Winant Pullis Johnston [2 photographs] |
Photographs, |
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Annabelle Vorhees Brown (Mrs. Austin H.) |
OVA Photographs, |
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Floral bower in home of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Latham |
Photographs, |
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Eleanor Latham Smith [?] on a vine-covered porch |
Photographs, |
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May Wright Sewall’s Classical School, ca. 1884 |
Photographs, |
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Marion County Seminary, by Pendergast |
Photographs, |
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Duplex apartment, 1232-1234 N. Alabama |
Photographs, |
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Joseph K. Sharpe Home |
Photographs, |
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Henry Latham Home |
Photographs, |
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Julia Graydon Sharpe at 1234 N. Alabama Street |
Photographs, |
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Street in Morton Place [postcard] |
Photographs, |
For additional information on this collection, including a list of subject headings that may lead you to related materials:
1. Go to the Indiana Historical Society's online catalog: http://157.91.92.2/
2. Click on the "Basic Search" icon.
3. Select "Call Number" from the "Search In:" box.
4. Search for the collection by its basic call number (in this case, P 0348).
5. When you find the collection, go to the "Full Record" screen for a list of headings that can be searched for related materials.