American Treasures of the Library of Congress: Reason

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Photographer and Mentor

Samuel Finley Breese Morse, head and shoulders portrait, facing front
Mathew Brady Studio
[Samuel Finley Breese Morse, head and shoulders portrait, facing front]
Gold toned, half-plate daguerreotype, ca. 1844-1860
Prints & Photographs Division
U.S. War College transfer, 1920 (125A.1)

Holograph letter
Mathew Brady (ca. 1823-1896)
to Samuel F. B. Morse (1791-1872)
Holograph letter, February 15, 1855
Page 2
Manuscript Division
Gift of Edward Lind Morse
and Leilia Morse, 1916-1944 (124.5)

 

After meeting the French artist and photographic pioneer Louis Daguerre (1789-1851), artist and inventor Samuel F. B. Morse embraced the new process of photography and imported it to the U.S. One of the first Americans to make "daguerreotypes," Morse opened a New York studio in 1840, and there he taught the art of daguerreotypty to numerous students including Mathew Brady, who's own highly successful studio later made this portrait of Morse sometime between 1844 and 1860. In this letter to Morse, Brady recognizes his teacher's significance to early photography by calling him "the first successful introducer of this rare art in America."

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