[Cornelius Conway Felton with His Hat and Coat]
early 1850s
![[Cornelius Conway Felton with His Hat and Coat] by John Adams Whipple](https://images.artheonmuseum.org/met/ph/thumb/cornelius-conway-felton-with-his-hat-and-coat-282046.webp)
Medium
Daguerreotype
Dimensions
visible: 8.3 x 7 cm (3 1/4 x 2 3/4 in.) each
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Rubel Collection, Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace, W. Bruce and Delaney H. Lundberg, and Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Gifts, 1997
Accession Number
1997.382.41
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the early 1850s, as photography burst onto the scene, master daguerreotypist John Whipple captured this intimate portrait of *Cornelius Conway Felton His Hat and Coat*. just 8.3 x 7 cm, the small-scale daguerreotype presents the Harvard classicist in moment of refined poise—hat in hand, coat at the ready—evoking the everyday dignity of mid-19th-century American. Whipple, renowned his technical precision, transformed this into a shimmering, mirror-like image that feels almost alive. The daguerreotype process, perfected shortly after Louis Daguerre's 1839 invention, produced unique positives...