Post by Californian on Nov 4, 2018 21:28:23 GMT -5
Alfred Uno Palmquist, an ethnic Swede, was born in Finland on June 21, 1850. He emigrated to the United States in 1872. The following year, in 1873 he opened together with a partner a photography studio on 32 West Seventh Street in Saint Paul, Minnesota named Palmquist & Lake. In 1883 he entered into a partnership with Norwegian immigrant Peder T. Jurgens (1844-1910) operating henceforth under the name of Palmquist & Jurgens. The firm remained in business until the early 1900’s. Alfred Palmquist was married in Saint Paul in 1883 to Emilie Francis Kohlert. The couple had two sons, Christian Uno Palmquist [1884-1950] and John “Jack” Uno Frederick Palmquist [1900-1956]. The Palmquist & Jurgens Studio today is mostly known for its series of iconic photographs taken of Sitting Bull in 1884. Sitting Bull had first visited Saint Paul in March 1884, being accompanied by one of his wives, his nephew One Bull, Indian agent James McLaughlin and an interpreter. He returned again the same year on September 4th, this time accompanied by Colonel Alvaren Allen, the owner of the Merchant Hotel in Saint Paul where Sitting Bull had stayed during his first visit. During the earlier visit in March he sat for a photography session with the Palmquist & Jurgens studio, then located at 225 East Seventh Street. It has been reported that a dozen glass plate negatives were taken of Sitting Bull and an additional one of him together with his nephew One Bull. It clearly was not a chance undertaking, in fact Sitting Bull was actually permitted to enter into a contract with the photographers reportedly giving them the exclusive right to sell and market these twelve photographs, finished in the form of albumen print cabinet cards, for a one-year period. It is also certain that Sitting Bull was given supply of prints of the photographs, for him to either give away or to sell. Apparently Sitting Bull scrupulously refused to let anyone else to make any sort of a picture of him while the contract lasted. It was only after one year later, in August 1885, when Sitting Bull was traveling with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show in Montreal, Canada, that the William Notman & Son studio was permitted to take additional photographs of him. In 1885 Sitting Bull cabinet cards were sold by Palmquist & Jurgens for one dollar each. Today these cards can fetch at auction sales in the United States and Europe sums ranging anywhere between one thousand and twenty-five hundred dollars apiece. Alfred Palmquist died in Saint Paul in 1922. The whereabouts and fate of the Sitting Bull photograph negatives of the Palmquist & Jurgens Studio remains unknown.
