[View Down Brattle Street from the Southworth & Hawes Studio at 5 1/2 Tremont Row, Boston]

Albert Sands Southworth|Josiah Johnson Hawes|Southworth and Hawes

1855 · Daguerreotype · Photographs

The Boston partnership of Southworth & Hawes was the leading photography studio in the United States from 1845 to 1862. While they produced portrait daguerreotypes for the most illustrious personalities of the day, they also made a number of exterior views that count among the major American artworks from the 1850s. This scene from their studio window is one in a series of three daguerreotypes that document activity around the Brattle Street Church during the funeral procession of Abbott Lawrence, a local philanthropist and businessman. As evidenced by the visible signage, the view is laterally reversed, as in most daguerreotypes. Each highly polished silvered-copper plate—exposed in a camera and developed in mercury vapors—is a unique photograph.

Artist

Albert Sands Southworth|Josiah Johnson Hawes|Southworth and Hawes

Date

1855

Medium

Daguerreotype

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Gift of I. N. Phelps Stokes, Edward S. Hawes, Alice Mary Hawes, and Marion Augusta Hawes, 1937