“There is something so human about that.”Īdams, who sat for more than 60 portraits over the course of his life, was intrigued by the uncanny likenesses produced by the new medium of photography, even if he wasn’t always charmed by the results. Bierman said, noting the white patch peeking out from a trouser cuff in the newly surfaced daguerreotype (and less visible in the image at the Met). “I keep getting caught on his cute socks,” Ms.
The same penetrating gaze, heavily whiskered jaw and elegant parlor backdrop are visible in a famous image also owned by the Met. The newly surfaced Adams daguerreotype also does not offer an entirely fresh view of the man. (A startlingly lifelike daguerreotype showing Harrison, made by the Boston photography studio Southworth and Hawes around 1850 and now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a reproduction of an oil portrait, not of a photograph.) And Adams himself was first photographed in 1842, by the Boston photographer John Plumbe Jr., though the images appear to be lost. He died of an uncertain illness 32 days into his term, and the image is not known to survive.
That honor, if few others, belongs to William Henry Harrison, who had a daguerreotype taken in 1841, around the time of his inauguration. You really get a sense of who Adams was.”Ĭlaims of historical precedence tend to come with caveats and asterisks, and it must be noted that the daguerreotype, a so-called half plate measuring about 5 inches by 4 inches, is not, technically, the earliest photographic image of an American president. “Not only is it an incredibly important historical record,” she said, “it’s also a stunning composition. He gave it as a gift to a fellow representative, whose descendants kept it in the family while apparently losing track of its significance.Įmily Bierman, the head of Sotheby’s photographs department, called it “without a doubt the most important historical photo portrait to be offered at auction in the last 20 years.” The daguerreotype, which carries an estimate of $150,000 to $250,000, was taken in a Washington portrait studio in March 1843, when Adams was in the middle of his post-presidential career in Congress. In August 1843, the former president, then 76, sat for a photographer during a visit to upstate New York and pronounced the results “all hideous.” Unfortunately for him, a daguerreotype from that sitting surfaced at an antiques shop in 1970, priced at 50 cents, and currently sits in the National Portrait Gallery, where it laid claim to being the oldest surviving original photograph of an American president.īut now, an older - and more flattering - daguerreotype of Adams, America’s sixth president, has surfaced, and will be sold at auction at Sotheby’s in October.
Count John Quincy Adams among those who could be grumpy about having their picture taken.
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