Peter and the pencil of light
by Bill Miller for
the Mail Tribune
Monday, November 25,
2019
When winter snows blew against his
family’s Swiss chalet, the boy was stuck at home.
While milking cows, brushing horses,
and spreading straw, he dreamed of places he had only
 |
| Obstalden, Switzerland |
Finished with his tedious chores, Peter
Britt restlessly looked through frosted windows hoping to see the town below.
By the fireplace, with pencil in hand, he sketched from memory for hours and
waited for warmer days.
In the summer, he wandered. He ran up
the steep green meadows behind his house, found a comfortable place to sit and
began to draw and paint.
Peter loved this ancient village of
Obstalden. He was born here in 1819. A serious boy, he taught himself to draw,
and his sketchbooks were filled
with images of the town square and the medieval
tower that stood there. He took painting lessons and experimented with color,
capturing grayish mists as they rubbed against the deep blue-green waters of
Whale Lake, the Walensee.
 |
| The Walensee, Switzerland |
As a young man, Peter was a traveling
portrait painter, who never strayed far from the family farm — and never far
from his lovely lady, Amalia Grob. They shared poems and postcards, and she
braided hair into lockets for Peter to carry with him. He painted her as the
Madonna with children in her arms. They were going to marry, but her father said
no. Portrait painters, he said, were as bad as actors and gypsies.
When Peter was 25, his mother died.
Already, the village economy was failing, and the family was frustrated. Peter
and 10 others, including his 70-year-old father, packed their entire lives into
wagons and left Switzerland for France. There they began their voyage across
the Atlantic.
The bustling docks of New Orleans
greeted them in May 1845. They headed up the Mississippi River to Illinois
where a Swiss colony had been established.
 |
| Peter Britt Portrait of George Davenport |
Peter set out to solicit portrait
commissions. He couldn’t have dreamed how instantly successful he would be. In
the middle of the Mississippi, at the Rock Island home of Colonel George
Davenport, Peter painted a portrait of the man who gave Davenport, Iowa, its
name. Peter painted a copy of this famous man and used it as his calling card.
As he wandered up and down the river,
managing just enough in commissions to pay for food, and
lodging, a new
opponent loomed — photography. Overnight, customers chose photographs over
paintings. They were faster, cheaper, and they were NEW.
 |
| Peter Britt |
Peter studied this wooden box that was
now destroying his life. Perhaps he could bring his artistic training to the
chemistry of this new invention and produce better photographs than untrained
competitors.
 |
| John Fitzgibbon |
The best-known photographer in the area
was John H. Fitzgibbon, a fiery Irishman and master photographer, who
advertised that he would “teach the art for a moderate fee.”
“It is my intention,” Fitzgibbon said,
“to save this beautiful art from the degradations of quacks and charlatans.
Within our grasp we have the enchanter’s wand, our pencil of light, and with it
we command the sun to stand still.”
The fee was steep, but Peter paid it,
and learned his lessons well. He had saved enough money to
buy a Voightlander
camera, one of the finest instruments in the world, and also the camera
Fitzgibbon had personally selected for him. By the fall of 1847, Peter opened
his own studio in Illinois.
 |
| Peter Britt and his Voightlander Camera |
No one knows what makes a wanderer
decide to wander, but in 1852, Peter Britt was on the move again.
Writer Bill Miller is the author of
“History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories.
Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.
