Large-format crystalotype portrait of Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, presented within an oval window mat and mounted to a substantial 9 x 12 in sheet. The photograph itself measures approximately 5.5 x 7.5 in. and depicts Daguerre seated in a three-quarter pose, one arm raised, with the direct, unidealized presence typical of early photographic portraiture. Beneath the image, the mount is printed “DAGUERRE” with an extended caption crediting J. A. Whipple and stating the portrait was made from “the original and only life picture in America,” with further wording noting the original’s ownership (as printed). The overall presentation, oversize scale, formal oval opening, and typographic caption, reads as a deliberate “presentation” object: equal parts portrait, document, and early promotional showpiece for a new paper process.

This is not a later photomechanical reproduction. It is an early paper photograph tied to John Adams Whipple, the Boston photographer and inventor associated with the Crystalotype process, an important mid-century attempt to popularize paper photography through richly finished prints that could be made “from life” or copied from daguerreotypes and then colored or finished to resemble painting. Contemporary scholarship highlights Whipple’s Crystalotype as part of the push to make paper photographs competitive with daguerreotypes in perceived fidelity and luxury, even as the public remained attached to the “metal” authority of the daguerreotype.

The subject elevates the piece well beyond a typical studio portrait. Daguerre was the public face of the daguerreotype process, and period images of him were never common; here, Whipple’s caption explicitly frames the source as a singular American-held life portrait, underscoring how prized, and how circulated, Daguerre’s likeness became among early practitioners and collectors. In that sense, the object sits at a crossroads: a landmark figure of the first dominant photographic medium, reproduced through a scarce and historically meaningful early paper process by one of America’s key photographic innovators.

See Sotheby’s, New York, “The David Feigenbaum Collection of Southworth & Hawes Daguerreotypes,” 27 April 1999, Lot 106 (estimated at $3,000 - $5,000) for a comparable example.