Josiah Johnson Hawes

Josiah Johnson Hawes (1808–1901) was born on a farm in East Sudbury, now Wayland, Massachusetts, and began his artistic journey after apprenticing as a carpenter from age seventeen for six years. Self-taught as a painter, he acquired books, colors, and brushes to study independently, mastering miniature portraits on ivory, oil paintings, and landscapes "with no teacher but my books." In 1841, a chance encounter with a daguerreotype captivated him, prompting him to abandon painting entirely. He studied the daguerreotype process under Francis Fauvel-Gouraud, Daguerre's student and agent in Boston, honing the technical precision that defined early photography.

By 1843, Hawes had partnered with Albert Sands Southworth to form the renowned studio Southworth & Hawes on Tremont Row in Boston's Scollay Square, operating until 1863. Together, they elevated daguerreotype portraiture to an art form, producing luminous, richly detailed images that captured the era's luminaries with dramatic lighting and compositional elegance. Notable works include portraits of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Daniel Webster, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (c. 1850–1856), Lajos Kossuth (1851), and Lemuel Shaw, as well as innovative scenes like "Demonstration of the Surgical Use of Ether" (1847), the Emerson School for Girls classroom (c. 1850), and urban views such as Brattle Street (1855). In 1849, Hawes married Southworth's sister, Nancy Niles Southworth, who assisted in the studio; they raised three children—Alice, Marion, and Edward—while he managed operations during Southworth's absences with Nancy and her brother Asa.

After the partnership dissolved, Hawes continued independently in the same studio, producing portraits, Boston views like the Common (c. 1875), and self-portraits into the 1890s, earning the title of America's oldest working photographer at age 94. His legacy endures in major collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, National Gallery of Art, and George Eastman House, where his daguerreotypes exemplify the artistry of photography's dawn, bridging painting's intimacy with mechanical precision.