Photographer and Mentor
Mathew Brady Studio
[Samuel Finley Breese Morse, head and shoulders
portrait, facing front]
Gold toned, half-plate daguerreotype, ca. 1844-1860
Prints & Photographs Division
U.S. War College transfer, 1920 (125A.1)
Mathew Brady (ca. 1823-1896)
to Samuel F. B. Morse (1791-1872)
Holograph letter, February
15, 1855
Page 2
Manuscript Division
Gift of Edward Lind Morse
and Leilia Morse, 1916-1944 (124.5)
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After meeting the French artist and photographic pioneer Louis
Daguerre (1789-1851), artist and inventor Samuel F. B. Morse embraced
the new process of photography and imported it to the U.S. One of
the first Americans to make "daguerreotypes," Morse opened a New
York studio in 1840, and there he taught the art of daguerreotypty
to numerous students including Mathew Brady, who's own highly successful
studio later made this portrait of Morse sometime between 1844 and
1860. In this letter to Morse, Brady recognizes his teacher's significance
to early photography by calling him "the first successful introducer
of this rare art in America."
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