Impressive original vintage matte-finish 16 x 20 portrait of American astronomer Charles Edward St. John, taken by photographer E. Willard Spurr. Annotated in the wide lower margin: "Dr. Charles E. St. John, 'Physics of the Sun,' Mt. Wilson Observatory, 1927." In fine condition, with some light corner creasing.
Ervin Willard Spurr was born in 1869 in New York and grew up in Iowa, where he established his reputation as a photographer, before moving his studio to Pasadena. He was noted for his technical accomplishments as a portrait photographer, and photographed subjects including stage and film actors of the day, as well as Native American actors (a collection of these photographs is held at the Library of Congress). St. John was not the only physicist who sat for Spurr: in 1931, Spurr photographed Albert Einstein when Einstein was a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Einstein was attracted by the research being done there, particularly at the Mount Wilson observatory—which housed the world's largest telescope at the time—and the theoretical processing of its astronomical discoveries.
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