A Lady Twice by Southworth & Hawes
SOLD March 2018 |
Two vignetted daguerreotypes of the same woman, one with bare shoulders against a white background, the other in black background style, circa 1850 by Southworth and Hawes, Boston. Each image housed in a full case, one a black pushbutton case and the other of hinged leather.
Found together, this lovely pair of images was recently positively linked to the Southworth & Hawes studio by the discovery of matching plates from the same photo sessions held in institutional collections.
These unique and lovely images are an striking demonstration of two very different Southworth and Hawes vignetting styles. The first presents the sitter against a black background, captured in a spotlight of illumination. In the second she is posed against a white background in décolleté dress, with her body "cropped out" by the vignetting to create the effect of a cameo or a marble sculptural bust. The strength of these two different posing techniques is heightened when it is seen, from a close study of the tiny beauty marks and freckles on sitter's face, that both images in fact show the same woman.
Other examples of these vignetting styles can be seen in Grant Romer and Brian Wallis, "Young America: The Daguerreotypes of Southworth and Hawes" (2005). They were favored and distinctive modi operandi of the duo.
Both daguerreotypes are in excellent condition. The white-background vignette shows a light vertical brush mark at right edge, and a few small abrasions. In the black-vignetted image, blush coloring has been applied to sitter's face and lips.
BELOW: Comparing the plates in this lot with matching Southworth & Hawes images held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (donation from the Hawes family) and in the George Eastman Museum photography collection. (Plates 1222 and 1379 in Young America.) In each case the sitter's head has moved slightly between exposures:
