Untitled (Portrait of Seated Woman)
Medium
Daguerreotype
Dimensions
14 × 10.9 cm (5 9/16 × 4 5/16 in.); Open case: 15.1 × 24.2 × 1.2 cm (6 × 9 9/16 × 1/2 in.); Case: 15.1 × 12.1 × 2 cm (6 × 4 13/16 × 13/16 in.); Plate: 14 × 10.8 cm (5 1/2 × 4 1/4 in.)
Classification
portrait
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
249869
Art Historical Context
John Adams Whipple’s *Untitled (Portrait of Seated Woman)* captures the quiet dignity of mid-nineteenth-century portraiture through the luminous clarity of a daguerreotype Created in 1860 the image reflects a time when photography was still novel art form, offering middle-class Americans an accessible way to preserve likenesses previously reserved for painted portraits. Whipple, a Boston-based pioneer in the field, helped popularize the medium in the United States by refining exposure techniques that produced remarkably sharp detail. The daguerreotype process, introduced in 1839, involved sen...