Snapshots of the Past

[Isaiah Lukens, half-length portrait, facing front] – Historic Photo Reproduction

[Isaiah Lukens, half-length portrait, facing front], [1840 or 1841] — historic photograph
[Isaiah Lukens, half-length portrait, facing front], [1840 or 1841]. Historic photograph from the Daguerreotypes & Early Photography collection.

(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)

Description

This historic photograph of [Isaiah Lukens, half-length portrait, facing front] brings a moment of history to your wall. It comes from the collections of the Library of Congress, scanned from the original and carefully restored.

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[Isaiah Lukens, half-length portrait, facing front]

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Few of the earliest American portraits survive with a named sitter as clearly as this one. The man shown is Isaiah Lukens (1779-1846), a Philadelphia maker of scientific and surveying instruments, and the plate was likely made in 1840 or 1841, within a few years of the daguerreotype process reaching the United States. The record suggests Paul Beck Goddard, a Philadelphia physician and early experimenter with the process, as the possible maker. The sixth-plate size and the half-length, front-facing pose were typical of portraits from this period, when long exposures required the sitter to hold still.

Created / published[1840 or 1841]
Medium1 photograph : sixth plate daguerreotype.
NotesPossibly by Paul Beck Goddard. Case: variant of Rinhart 271; pressure sensitive label on case 162." Resealed W.F. Stapp
SubjectsLukens, Isaiah,--1779-1846.
SourceLibrary of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Original scan3,639 × 4,493 px · prints to 12 × 15 in at 300 dpi
Reference214_Isaiah_Lukens_halflengt_1840

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