View of Mt. Rainier, Seattle, Washington

Asahel Curtis was the younger brother of Edward S. Curtis, who was best known for his landmark 20-volume set of photographic albums of Native Americans. Asahel worked in his brother’s studio in the late 1890s, until a dispute over photographic credit led to a decisive break. A passionate outdoorsman, Asahel produced one of the most comprehensive early image collections of the upper Pacific Northwest and actively contributed to the development of Mount Ranier National Park, seen here. This object’s distinctive appearance comes from Curtis’s use of the orotone process, in which a gelatin silver photograph is printed on glass and gold paint is applied to the reverse. Edward Curtis had famously complained that the ordinary photographic print lacked depth, but he explained that in the orotone “all the transparency is retained and they are as full of life and sparkle as an opal.”