Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes

The Southworth & Hawes studio, Boston

By descent to Edward Southworth Hawes, Boston

Likely Holman's Print Shop, Boston, early 1940s

Collection of David Feigenbaum, Boston

Sotheby's New York, The David Feigenbaum Collection of Southworth & Hawes and Other 19th-Century Photographs, 27 April 1999, Sale 7295, Lot 58

Grant B. Romer and Brian Wallis, Young America: The Daguerreotypes of Southworth & Hawes (New York and Rochester: International Center of Photography and George Eastman House, 2005), cat. nos. 901 and 1680

The daguerreotypes in this lot were sold at Sotheby's in the landmark 1999 auction of The David Feigenbaum Collection. Discovered by the heirs of David Feigenbaum (1917-1998) shortly after his death, the collection of some 240 Southworth & Hawes daguerreotypes was a revelation, outnumbering nearly all previously-known Southworth & Hawes holdings. Although it was not known when, how, or from whom Massachusetts-native David Feigenbaum acquired his collection, it is likely that many, if not all, of the daguerreotypes were purchased from Boston's Holman's Print Shop, the primary retail outlet for Southworth & Hawes daguerreotypes in the 1930s and 1940s. For a full and fascinating discussion on this subject, see the original entry in Sotheby's 1999 catalogue.

Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes were technical innovators who understood every detail of their craft, from plate preparation, to development, to final presentation. Filled with detail and exhibiting a remarkable three-dimensionality, the two daguerreotypes of readers offered in the present lot demonstrate their makers absolute mastery of the daguerreotype process.