Untitled (Group Portrait of Men)
Medium
Daguerreotype
Dimensions
10.7 × 14 cm (4 1/4 × 5 9/16 in.); Open case: 23.5 × 15 × 1 cm (9 5/16 × 5 15/16 × 7/16 in.); Case: 23.5 × 11.7 × 2 cm (9 5/16 × 4 5/8 × 13/16 in.); Plate: 10.8 × 14 cm (4 1/4 × 5 1/2 in.)
Classification
portrait
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
249868
Art Historical Context
John Adams Whipple’s *Untitled (Group Portrait of Men)*, created in 1852, offers a fascinating glimpse into the early days of photography. As a leading American practitioner of the daguerreotype process, Whipple helped popularize this revolutionary medium in the United States The image, housed in an ornate protective case typical of the era, captures a gathering of unidentified gentlemen with remarkable clarity and detail, reflecting the formal conventions of mid-nineteenth-century portraiture. Daguerreotypes, introduced in 1839, produced unique, highly detailed positives on silver-plated cop...