Walt Whitman by William S. Pendleton, ca. 1872

This photo is on a card stamped "Pendleton, 297 Fulton Street, Cor. of Johnson, Brooklyn." The New York City Directory lists Pendleton at this address starting in 1869, and advertisements for William S. Pendleton's studio at this address (as "a practical photographer" who directly imports "the best stereoscopic views," with "a large assortment of New York and Brooklyn views") appear in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1870. In 1872, G. Frank Pearsall opened a studio next door to Pendleton's, at 298 Fulton.

Whitman had several photos taken by Pearsall, including the portrait Whitman used as the frontispiece to Two Rivulets, which he labeled "Phot'd from life, Sept., '72, Brooklyn, N.Y., by G.F.E. Pearsall, Fulton St." This photograph, which was discovered in 2005, shows Whitman wearing the same (or very similar) suit and tie, and perhaps the same shirt, as in the Pearsall photos and also in photographs taken around the same time at J. Gurney and Son in New York. The only time Whitman mentions Pendleton is in a notebook ("D. W. Wilder") in which entries range from 1866 to 1877, with the entries surrounding this particular one from the early 1870s. The entry reads simply, "Pendleton, photo, 1164 Broadway" (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, vol. 4, New York University Press, 1984, p. 817). A few pages earlier in this notebook, Whitman records "G. Frank Pearsall 298 Fulton st Brooklyn," and a few pages later he records "V. W. Horton at Gurneys, cor 5th av. & 16th st.," later identifying Horton as the "photo operator" at Gurney's studio (Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, pp. 814, 822, 826). The proximity of these entries may indicate that the three photographic sessions took place within a very short period of time.

The association of Pendleton (1833–?) with a Broadway address is at this point still a mystery. He is listed in Craig's Daguerreian Registry as having a studio at 5 Chatham Square in New York from 1857 through 1860, and a number of his portraits of Civil War soldiers still exist (they all bear his imprint with the Chatham Square address, suggesting he may have been there through most of the 1860s). In 1888 and 1889 directories, Pendleton is listed at 336 Fulton, and in 1890 at 436 Fulton.

For more information on William S. Pendleton, see "Notes on Whitman's Photographers."