Virginia born, Robert Alexander Gilbert (1870–1942) was the paid assistant for well-known ornithologist and conservationist William Brewster (1851–1919). His talents and life were barely noted until more than 2,000 antique glass plate negatives (taken between 1888 and 1917) were discovered in the attic of an old Lincoln, Massachusetts estate by author John Hanson Mitchell in the 1970s. Originally credited as the work of Brewster, a tip from a Harvard research assistant filing Brewster’s correspondence, led Mitchell to conclude, after extensive research, that the plates were the work of Gilbert.

Detailed in Mitchell’s book Looking for Mr. Gilbert: The Unlikely Life of the First African American Landscape Photographer, the story of an unassuming, talented photographer and accomplished pianist unfolds. Moving between October Farm, Brewster’s Concord, Massachusetts home and his Brattle Street house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Gilbert would assume whatever role was required—valet, manservant, driver, caretaker, field guide—in his service to one of Boston’s most prominent men. At times he would dine with visiting guests as an equal, and other times he would blend into the background, expertly facilitating the tasks at hand.

Gilbert and Brewster were inseparable. Gilbert traveled throughout New England—from camping along the Concord River in Massachusetts to the forests of New Hampshire to Lake Umbagog in Maine—all the while straddling two worlds, that of the Boston Brahmins and their elite society and that of a Black man striving against ever-present racism. Gilbert’s detailed observances and comments are documented throughout Brewster’s journals. Wherever he traveled and whoever he associated with, so did Gilbert.

So valued was Gilbert that Brewster took pains to protect his associate and friend, 21 years his junior, after his death. Brewster’s bequest to the Harvard University Museum of Comparative Zoology of his bird skin collection came with the requirement that Gilbert be hired as an assistant to the curator, a position he held until his death.