Profile portrait of Frederick Douglass

Collaborator Frederick Douglass (American, 1818 - 1895)

Dateca. 1858

MediumDaguerreotype

DimensionsPlate (sixth): 3 1/4 × 2 3/4 inches (8.26 × 6.99 cm)
Case (open): 3 5/8 × 6 3/8 × 3/8 inches (9.21 × 16.19 × 0.95 cm)
Case (closed): 3 5/8 × 3 1/8 × 5/8 inches (9.21 × 7.94 × 1.59 cm)

Credit LineGift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.

Object number2005.27.42

Signednone

InscribedOn preserver verso, bottom left edge, finely inscribed text: "Fred Douglass".

Markingsnone

On View

Not on view

Collections

Photography

Terms

DescriptionProfile portrait of a man (Frederick Douglass) dressed in a three piece suit. This sixth plate daguerreotype is housed in a decorative brass mat inside of a paper covered wooden case with an embossed red velvet liner. The case depicts an urn filled with flowers on recto and verso.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Developing Greatness: The Origins of American Photography, 1839-1885. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, June 9 – December 30, 2007, no. 96.

Photographic Wonders: American Daguerreotypes from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Taft Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH, May 17 - August 25, 2013, Wichita Art Museum, January 17 – May 10, 2015, no cat.

Rotation 24. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, June 9 – November 12, 2017, no cat.

Gallery Label

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) was a brilliant and pioneering social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was also the most photographed American public figure of the 1800s. Douglass well understood the camera’s potential to express the humanity and dignity of its subjects, and used himself as a model to convey these ideas. Douglass did not view these self-portraits as a means of self-aggrandizement, but rather as vehicles to further his abolitionist agenda.

Provenance

Hallmark Cards, Inc., Kansas City, MO, 2001;
Given by Hallmark Cards, Inc. to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2005.

Published References

Keith F. Davis, The Origins of American Photography: from Daguerreotype to Dry-Plate, 1839-1885. With contributions by Jane L. Aspinwall. Kansas City, MO: Hall Family Foundation: in association with the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2007. Distributed by Yale University Press. Published in conjunction with Developing Greatness: the Origins of American Photography, 1839-1885, shown at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 88 (repro.).

Deborah Emont Scott and Marc F. Wilson, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: a Handbook of the Collection. 7^th ed. Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008, 189 (repro.).

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