Southworth & Hawes turn a family moment into high art in a daguerreotype traditionally identified as Marion Hawes, the photographer Josiah Johnson Hawes’s young daughter. The child sits on the studios iconic turned bobbin chair set on a cushion, head tipped back in sleep, hands at rest in her lap. A fluted column rises behind her and a second column and curtain define the studio corner, creating the quiet stage on which the scene unfolds.

The Boston partnership’s studio on Tremont Row, active from 1843 to 1862, employed movable architectural props and controlled skylight to produce sculptural modeling and a sense of presence rare in the daguerreian era. The paired portable columns visible here were part of that working theater, allowing Southworth & Hawes to frame sitters with classical order while shaping light across the plate. Child portraiture often contended with long exposures; sleeping children became both a practical solution and an emblem of innocence. The image resonates with other known Southworth & Hawes family pictures in which domestic life intersects with the studio’s refined staging.

Provenance adds weight. The plate comes from the famed Feigenbaum holdings, Lot 36, a group long consulted by scholars of the partnership. Likely Boston, circa 1850–1855. An intimate study that joins authorship, subject, and studio practice at the highest level of American daguerreotypy.