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George Washington, 1732-1799
George Washington died nearly forty years before the introduction of the daguerreian process, so there are no original daguerreotypes of America's first president. Daguerreotypes were made, however, of Gilbert Stuart's famous unfinished painting of Washington, which was acquired in 1831 by the Boston Athenaeum and is now jointly owned by the National Portrait Gallery and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This daguerreotype of the "Athenaeum" portrait is the work of pioneering daguerreotypist John A. Whipple. It predates by several years daguerreotypes of the same Washington portrait made by Whipple's rivals -- fellow Boston-based daguerrians Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hewes.
John Adams Whipple, after Gilbert Stuart, 1847 |