Handsome man with fifth finger ring – Art Blart

February 2018

Jeremiah Gurney (American) at 349 Broadway, New York
Untitled (Cross-eyed man in three-quarter profile)
Nd
Half-plate daguerreotype

All of these photographs came from the Internet, most from an auction site selling them at prices way beyond what I could afford.

As you can see, I have given most of them a digital clean. Even though this might seem too clinical, unethical? or just wrong – you can now see the photographs as they were originally intended, without the grunge and gunk of years of dust and degradation over the top of them.

Just look at the photograph above, and you can immediately get an idea of the unique spatiality of the image, from front to back. A really low depth of field that is focused diagonally across the front of the body and jacket, making the hands, the table and the back of the head out of focus. Because it is occluded with all the scratches and dust on the original, you have little idea of the complexity of the visualisation of this portrait until you observe the image in its pristine state, as it was meant to be seen just after it was taken.

I just love these early portraits and photographic processes for the presence they bring to their subjects. For example the hair, the gaze and the attitude of the right hand in Handsome man with fifth finger ring is just magnificent. I could go on cleaning them for a very long time, and never get bored.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Unknown photographer (American)
Untitled (Group of three men)
c. 1850
Sixth-plate daguerreotype
Unusual period frame of cast thermoplastic

Unknown photographer (American)
Untitled (Man on crutches)
c. 1850-1860s
Sixth-plate ambrotype
Housed in a moulded leather case

Unknown photographer (American)
Untitled (Man with pistols)
c. 1850-1860s
Sixth-plate daguerreotype, delicately tinted
Housed in a moulded leather case

Unknown photographer (American)
Untitled (Man, possibly a sailor, wearing hoop earrings)
Nd
Sixth-plate daguerreotype
Housed in a moulded leather case

Unknown photographer (American)
Untitled (African American)
c. 1850s
Sixth-plate daguerreotype

Unknown photographer (American)
Untitled (Two men in caps, elegantly dressed)
c. 1850s
Sixth-plate daguerreotype
Housed in a moulded leather case

Unknown photographer (American)
Untitled (Handsome man with fifth finger ring)
c. 1850s
Sixth-plate daguerreotype

Unknown photographer (American)
Untitled (Portrait of violinist holding instrument)
c. 1855
Sixth-plate daguerreotype
Union case

Unknown photographer (American)
Untitled (Two men, one with trug of tools)
c. 1850-1860s
Sixth-plate ambrotype
Housed in a moulded leather case

Unknown photographer (American)
Untitled (Two firemen)
c. 1850-1860s
Quarter-plate tinted tintype
Leather case

Unknown photographer (American)
Untitled (Man in button braces)
c. 1850
Ninth-plate daguerreotype

William J. Shew (American, 1820-1903)
Charles Calistus Burleigh (1810-1878)
c. 1845-1850
Quarter-plate daguerreotype
11.5 x 9.5cm (cased)
Boston Public Library, Print Department

Charles Calistus Burleigh (1810-1878)

An ardent abolitionist and journalist, Burleigh was vocal against Connecticut’s “Black Law” and became editor of the Unionist, originally published in defence of Prudence Crandall’s school.

Eccentric in dress and with a flowing beard he vowed not to remove until the end of slavery, Burleigh turned his back on a professional career to become agent and lecturer for the Middlesex Anti-Slavery. He was a regular contributor to the Liberator and one of the editors of the Pennsylvania Freeman.

He was a supportive friend of Abby Kelley. Active in a number of reform movements, Burleigh plunged into the Anti-Sabbatarian campaign after he was arrested in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1847 for selling antislavery literature on Sunday. Abby and Stephen Foster had been arrested in Ohio for the same offence in July 1846.

In 1845 he published a pamphlet, Thoughts on the Death Penalty, condemning capital punishment.

Karen Board Moran. “Charles Calistus Burleigh (1810-1878),” on the Worcester Women’s History Project website 26/3/2005 [Online] Cited 10/02/2022

William J. Shew (1820-1903)

William Shew (1820-1903) made a name for himself as a Daguerrotype portrait artist in the United States. He maintained a mobile studio in a wagon that he called his “Daguerrotype Saloon.”

William Shew was born on a farm in Waterton, New York on March 1820. At the age of 20 he read an article by the inventor Samuel F.B. Morse about the daguerreotype process and, along with his three brothers, moved to New York City to study with Morse. His brothers Jacob, Myron and Trueman were also photographers, but not attained the stature of William Shew. Morse would become more famous as the inventor of the telegraph.

After completing his studies, Shew worked briefly in upstate New York before becoming the supervisor at John Plumbe’s gallery in Boston. Three years later he opened John Shew and Company in Boston, where he manufactured his own dyes and created daguerrotypes with wooden frames, thin veneer backings and embossed paper coverings. In 1846, Shew married Elizabeth Marie Studley and had a daughter they named Theodora Alice, born in Feb. 1848. He also became and active member of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.

In 1851, he sold his business and sailed on the steamer Tennessee to San Francisco, where he joined his brother Jacob who arrived in 1849. It is believed that Shew set up a gallery shortly after arriving in San Francisco, which may have been destroyed by the 1851 fire that swept the city. After the fire he set up “Shew’s Daguerreian Saloon.”

Sherri Panchaud Onorati. “William Shew (1820-1903) – Photographer & Daguerreotype Innovator,” on the family heirlooms website April 22, 2011 [Online] Cited 10/02/2022

Unknown photographer (American)
Untitled (Two young men with straw hats, seated beside each other)
Nd
Sixth-plate painted tintype
Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

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