A rare group of portraits of Thomas Lake Harris (1823-1906) - minister, mystic, poet, vintner, and founder of the Northern California Utopian colony, Fountain Grove.

Included are three cabinet card portraits, one bearing the credit of J.K. Piggott, a Santa Rosa studio photographer; a signed portrait, used as the frontispiece for his 1891 publication “God’s Breath in Man and In Human Society (though this example appears never to have been bound in);” two other large-format portraits, both signed on the mounts; and two unmounted portraits, one a variant of the “God’s Breath” image, and the other showing Harris seated at his home in Fountaingrove.

Harris' family emigrated from England to the United States when he was a young child, settling in Utica, New York. When he was 20, he became a Universalist preacher but formally withdrew from the church not long after. Harris developed his own belief system influenced by spiritualism and the teachings of Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. In 1851, he moved to Virginia and founded the Mountain Cove Community of Spiritualists, on a plot of land claimed to be the actual site of the Garden of Eden.

After the collapse of the Mountain Cove Community, Harris left for England, where he preached and published several books, including some well-regarded poetry. It was during this time abroad he began his complex, long-standing relationship with British author Laurence Oliphant.

In 1861 Harris founded another utopian religious co-operative, the Brotherhood of the New Life (also referred to as “The Use”), in Brocton, NY. In 1875, he moved to Santa Rosa, California, with many of the Brotherhood members, to form the community of Fountaingrove. In 1876 he ceded from public view, but disseminated to his followers books of verse which pondered sexual queries. He passed away in 1906 and was succeeded by Kanaye Nagasawa, an esteemed vintner and the first former Japanese national to live permanently in the United States.