Sculpture Gallery, Boston Athenaeum

Photography Studio Southworth and Hawes American
 Albert Sands Southworth American
 Josiah Johnson Hawes American

Not on view

Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes were known worldwide for the extreme finesse of their daguerreotype portraits of Boston's notable politicians, writers, merchants, and other prominent citizens, a fine collection of which was among the early photographic acquisitions of the Metropolitan Museum in 1937. This whole-plate daguerreotype shows a type of subject not otherwise represented in the Museum's collection of Southworth and Hawes-a display of American sculpture at the Boston Atheneum. At the center is a plaster cast of Diana of Versailles, famed since the sixteenth century as a touchstone of Roman sculpture. Around it, in one of the earliest permanent displays of sculpture in America, are a cast of Houdon's bust of Washington and another, possibly of Franklin—in sum, a declaration of Boston's claim to be the "Athens of America." Like the casts themselves, Southworth and Hawes's exquisite daguerreotype is a faithful copy of reality, in their words a "transformation of shadows into substance."

Sculpture Gallery, Boston Athenaeum, Southworth and Hawes (American, active 1843–1863), Daguerreotype

This image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.

Open Access

As part of the Met's Open Access policy, you can freely copy, modify and distribute this image, even for commercial purposes.

API

Public domain data for this object can also be accessed using the Met's Open Access API.