Untitled (Portrait of a Standing Man with a Steer)
1849-56
Medium
Daguerreotype
Dimensions
Plate: 10.8 × 14 cm (4 1/4 × 5 1/2 in.); Case: 15.2 × 12.1 × 2.3 cm (6 × 4 13/16 × 15/16 in.); Open case: 15.2 × 24.2 × 1 cm (6 × 9 9/16 × 7/16 in.)
Classification
portrait
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
250215
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Daguerreotypes are one of the earliest forms of photography and most commonly employed to make portraits in the studio, so this study of a bull in a field is highly unusual. It is even more striking with the addition of careful hand coloring. Montgomery Simons, a noted Philadelphia daguerreotypist and the author of several photography manuals, had worked in Charleston, South Carolina, starting in 1849, and in Richmond, Virginia for about five years beginning in 1851, and probably made this image...