Medallion Portrait of a Woman

1850

From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art

Dominant colour

Medallion Portrait of a Woman is a 1850 by Albert Sands Southworth, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.

Who painted this?: Albert Sands Southworth
When & what style?: 1850 · Romanticism
Where can I see it?: Cleveland Museum of Art

About this work

This painting shows a woman’s face in a round medallion shape. Her features are sharp and clear, with soft shadows around her eyes and mouth. The background is plain and dark, making her stand out. It’s a daguerreotype, an early photo made on metal plates. Southworth and Hawes ran a famous studio in Boston. They added extra silver to their plates to make the images shinier and more detailed. Want to see more of their work? Look up Albert Sands Southworth at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

The story of this work

Overview

Southworth, a druggist, and Hawes, a carpenter and self-taught painter, operated a daguerreotype studio together in Boston that served the city’s elite. Masters of the aesthetic and technical aspects of the medium, they built the first skylight in Boston to supply a clear, strong light in their studio. Another of their innovations was the addition of an extra layer of silver to their plates to enhance the luminosity and level of polish of their daguerreotypes. This medallion portrait is an example of the most difficult and expensive portrait mode of the 1850s. A daguerreotype plate was first…

Read the full account in the museum source.