B. Jay Antrim

Abstract

The daguerreian era in Hawai'i began in the summer of 1845 when Theophilus Metcalf, an engineer and French scholar living in Honolulu, advertised that he was prepared to ‘take likenesses by the daguerreotype’. The first surviving portraits, however, were made in January 1847, when an artist who called himself Senor Lebleu arrived from Peru and set up a studio.1 Daguerreians continued to arrive and practise their art until approximately 1860. During this period there were almost a dozen artists working in the islands, for periods varying from one month to several years. The most prolific daguerreian whose work can be fairly well documented was Hugo Stangenwald (1829–99). He operated a studio in Honolulu from 1853 to 1858. His competitor for a year and a half (from 1855 to 1856) was B. Jay Antrim. Antrim left a memoir that, in a somewhat rambling and self-promoting fashion, recorded his success in the art in the Hawaiian Islands. This chatty memoir, which he titled ‘In the Days of Kamehameha IV’, was apparently written for his mother, who lived in the eastern United States.2

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