Snapshots of the Past

Half-length daguerreotype portrait of a man in dark coat – Vintage Wall Art

Half-length daguerreotype portrait of a man in dark coat, 1844 — historic photograph
Half-length daguerreotype portrait of a man in dark coat, 1844. Historic photograph from the Daguerreotypes & Early Photography collection.

(Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)

Description

A window into the past: Half-length daguerreotype portrait of a man in dark coat, preserved in this historic photograph. Drawn from the Snapshots of the Past archive, it is an authentic piece of documented history.

Framed, it is ready for the wall; unframed, it is ready for the frame you choose. A fine choice for anyone who loves history, and a gift that gets noticed. Free shipping in the lower 48 states. Snapshots of the Past has been bringing history to the wall since 2001, for tens of thousands of customers worldwide.

Half-length daguerreotype portrait of a man in dark coat

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Few details survive about the sitter of this half-length daguerreotype, so what sets it apart is the plate itself: a dark wool coat, a mirror-bright silver surface, and the sharp, reversed-looking detail that the process produced. Daguerreotypes were made on copper sheets coated with silver and developed over mercury vapor, and an 1844 portrait like this one would have required a sitter to hold still for several seconds or longer in bright light. Photography was then only about five years old, having been publicly announced in Paris in 1839, so images of this kind were still a novelty for ordinary people. Look closely at the tonal range, which runs from deep shadow in the coat to highlights on the face, and you can see why these early plates were prized as unrepeatable keepsakes.

Created / published1844
Original scan3,275 × 4,096 px · prints to 11 × 14 in at 300 dpi
Reference105_Howell_Cobb_halflength_1844

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Snapshots of the Past helps heritage brands, museums, historians and storytellers tell stories with history: historic prints, image licensing and historical storytelling drawn from more than 25 years of research and curation.

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