On the day President Harrison delivered his ill-fated inaugural speech, March 4, 1841, he paused to have his formal photographic portrait taken in the Capitol. Harrison favored the request of photographers Justus E. Moore, a prominent Philadelphia dentist, and his partner “Captain” Ward. The two men were successfully engaged in taking daguerreotype likenesses of many
of the most distinguished members of the House of Representatives and Senate. In a letter published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, President Harrison was reported to have been “delighted with the results” of the sitting.1 Just 31 days after his inauguration, President Harrison died from pneumonia. Unfortunately, the present location of the daguerreotype portrait of the ephemeral President Harrison is unknown. The lost image is of considerable historical importance, as it represents the first photograph of a United States president taken while in office. Three of Harrison’s immediate predecessors, Presidents John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren, had their daguerreotype likenesses made after leaving office. Several of these images are extant.
John Quincy Adams
The earliest known photograph of a president of the United States is a faint and scratched daguerreotype likeness of John Quincy Adams, who served as chief executive from 1825 to 1829 and later as a member of Congress until his death in office in 1848. This likeness of the former President Adams was taken at the gallery of Bishop and Gray in early August 1843 in Utica, New York. President Adams, then 76 years old, was returning from a visit to Niagara Falls and stopped at Utica to see an old friend, Judge Ezeikiel Bacon. In his diary for August 1, 1843, Adams remarked, “Four daguerreotype likenesses of my head were taken, two of them jointly with the head of Mr. Bacon. All hideous.” Adams continued his diary entry the following day, “At seven this morning Mr. Bacon came and I went with him to the Shadow Shop, where three more Daguerreotype likeness were taken of me, no better than those of yesterday. They are all too true to the original.”2
The humorous account of President Adams’s experience at the photographer’s gallery is not unlike other reports by early sitters. In 1843 photography was still an embryonic industry in which “bolt upright” poses and vacuous stares were considered requisite elements for the lengthy and slow exposure times the daguerreotype camera demanded. The startled reactions of the sitters to their portraits may have stemmed from their initial encounter with reality; after all, the daguerreotype was simply a mirror with a memory. The process may have conveyed too many “warts” for patrons long accustomed to the forgiving brush strokes of the painter.
,
, 
, 
, :Owen:, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
).
).
