Original glass plate negative of Washington Senators pitcher Walter Johnson, taken by noted Chicago photographer Francis Burke. Johnson is pictured warming up on the sideline at Comiskey Park, circa 1912. If this image looks familiar to card collectors it is with good reason, because it is almost identical to that used on Johnson’s 1914/1915 Cracker Jack card. All the Cracker Jack card images are artist's renditions based upon photographs. This is almost certainly the very photo used by the artist to create Johnson's card, however, he or she took the liberty of slightly altering it. Cracker Jack cards were produced by the Chicago firm Rueckheim Brothers & Eckstein, so it was only natural that the company turned to hometown photographer Francis Burke when it needed images for its now iconic card set. Johnson was one of many player images supplied by Burke for the set, including such stars as Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, and Napoleon Lajoie. This is one of several Francis Burke Cracker Jack negatives featured in this auction, all of which, of course, are one of a kind. Johnson's Cracker Jack card has always been extremely desirable and is one of the keys to the set, making this a significant piece of baseball history for both photograph and card collectors. The negative (7x5") displays minor flaws, mainly along the periphery, common to nearly all early 1900s glass negatives. There is also a moderate scratch in the lower right corner, but it does not affect the central image area. VG. Francis P. Burke (1871-1949) was a prominent Chicago newspaper photographer whose work ranged far beyond baseball. He took thousands of images of immigrant life in Chicago and, in 1912, opened a photo studio with Henry A. Atwell (1879-1949), known as Burke & Atwell, that specialized in theatrical, magazine, and newspaper images. Sometime prior to 1929, Burke severed his partnership with Atwell and opened another studio known as Burke & Koretke. Burke had been the Cubs official photographer in the early 1900s but was later replaced by George Burke (in a story that has been told many times, and which may be apocryphal, Burke lost his job as Cubs photographer simply because a Cubs employee couldn't remember his first name and mistakenly confused him with George Burke). Nevertheless, he was still a frequent visitor to the ballpark and between the approximate years 1909 to 1916, Burke earned extra income by selling his baseball images to various Chicago-based businesses, including Rueckheim Bros. & Eckstein (Cracker Jack), Max Stein, Novelty Cutlery, Crystal Pure Candy Co., Carl Joseph & Co. (tailors), Royal Tailors, and Irwin Howe's Baseball Correspondence League of America, which published a "Pitching Course." To baseball collectors, Burke’s images are ubiquitous and instantly recognizable. Despite the range and relative scarcity of his work, his baseball images are arguably among the best of the deadball era.