Anonymous American Photographers

half-plate daguerreotype, sealed, cased, inscriptions in a contemporary hand in ink inside the rear cover, circa 1850

Stanley B. Burns, Mirror Mirror: The Burns Collection Daguerreotypes (New York: The Burns Archive Press, 2012), pl. 114

This plate is overall very clean and bright, and each sitter is posed handsomely. There is very fine blush-colored tinting that enlivens the sitters' cheeks. An extremely thin border of tarnish along the left, lower, and upper edges of the mat is not distracting. Upon very close inspection along the lower edge, there are two pen-point rust-colored spots with halos. Some of the visual 'noise' one sees upon close inspection is due to speckles of indeterminate nature on the underside of the cover glass, and not to accretions on the plate. The original seal is present but deteriorating. The reverse of the plate appears somewhat silvered, suggesting that it was electroplated a second time. The case is in generally very good condition, with only intermittent splitting along the spine. One of the hooks is lacking.
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The present daguerreotype pictures the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Medical School class of 1852-53. The man third from left, top row is identified by inscriptions inside the case as John Gilmore Minor.  The university catalog for that year notes that John G. Minor attended the following university schools: Chemistry, Medicine, Physiology, Surgery, and Anatomy. The catalogue lists his residence as Albemarle County, Virginia.  Minor eventually practiced medicine in Bridgewater, Virginia in 1887.  Daguerreotypes from this period with seated and identified medical students are rare.