Charles Loring Elliott, 12 Oct 1812 - 25 Aug 1868 Search this
Medium:
Half-plate daguerreotype
Dimensions:
Image/Sight: 10.8 × 7.6 cm (4 1/4 × 3")
Mat (brass): 13.3 × 10.2 cm (5 1/4 × 4")
Case open: 15.2 × 24.6 × 1.5 cm (6 × 9 11/16 × 9/16")
Case closed: 15.2 × 12.3 × 1.8 cm (6 × 4 13/16 × 11/16")
Type:
Photograph
Date:
c. 1850
Exhibition Label:
Regarded by his contemporaries as one of the nation’s finest portraitists, Charles Loring Elliott painted more than seven hundred portraits representing many of mid-nineteenth-century America’s most prominent businessmen, political leaders, and cultural figures. Elliott “spoke enthusiastically of the Daguerreian art” and strove to match the clarity and detail of photographic images in his paintings. Not surprisingly, he often employed daguerreotypes—including those from the studio of his friend Mathew Brady—as the sources for his portraits.
A self-portrait that Elliott painted around 1850 bears a close resemblance to this Brady daguerreotype, which may have served as a study for that work.
En opinión de sus contemporáneos, Charles Loring Elliott fue uno de los mejores pintores retratistas del país. Pintó más de setecientos retratos en los que representó a muchos de los empresarios, políticos y figuras culturales más prominentes de Estados Unidos a mediados del siglo XIX. Elliott “hablaba con entusiasmo del arte del daguerrotipo” y en sus pinturas procuraba igualar la nitidez y los detalles de las imágenes fotográficas. No es de sorprender que a menudo usara daguerrotipos como fuente para sus obras, incluidos los del estudio de su amigo Mathew Brady. Un autorretrato pintado por Elliott hacia 1850 guarda una gran semejanza con este daguerrotipo de Brady, que quizás sirviera de base para la pintura.
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; conservation made possible by a grant from the Smithsonian's Collections Care and Preservation Fund