Death's Comfort

Opening: $3,800 Hammer Price: $3,800 SOLD Skylight Gallery 18 March 2004

Quarter plate daguerreotype, death view of young man with a mysterious hand comfortingly laid atop his, by "[Jean Victor?] Andrieux / Peintre en Miniature / Portraits au Daguerreotype / Place du Palais-Royale 243" [Paris], late 1840s.   ( Inventory# ia585 )

Either deceased or closely approaching death, this young man gazes - with seeing eyes? - towards his own clasped hands and a mysterious hand from the left, laid atop his own, a comfort for that final journey from which, as the Greeks said, no traveler returns.

This image appears to be the work of Jean Victor Andrieux, active as a painter of miniatures as well as daguerreotypist.