MATHEW BRADY'S PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHS TO BE EXHIBITED AT THE FOGG

For Immediate Release: December 16, 1997
PRESS PREVIEW: Friday, January 30, 1998 at 3:00 p.m.-R.S.V.P. to the Public Relations Office.

Cambridge, Massachusetts-The traveling exhibition Mathew Brady's Portraits: Images as History, Photography as Art will be on display at the Fogg Art Museum from January 31 through April 19, 1998.* This exhibition has been organized by the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Mathew Brady (1823?-1896) sought to ennoble portrait photography as a means to promote civic virtue and unified national identity. Posed with attitudes and with props which carefully invoke the sitter's occupation and social standing, his portraits reinforced traditional boundaries of class, race and gender in American society. This is the first modern exhibition devoted to his career. The exhibition is accompanied by the publication Mathew Brady and the Image of History by Mary Panzer, curator of photographs at National Portrait Gallery and curator of the exhibition. Mathew Brady's Portraits is organized at the Harvard University Art Museums by Deborah Martin Kao, Charles C. Cunningham, Sr., Associate Curator of Photographs. An additional special installation of highlights from the Fogg Art Museum's and Fine Arts Library's (Harvard University) extensive holdings of Brady's work will complement the larger exhibition.

While he is best known today for his photographic documents of the Civil War, Brady's contemporaries admired him for his portraits, which they called historic works of art-Abraham Lincoln, General Robert E. Lee, Jenny Lind, Thomas Cole, Clara Barton, Jefferson Davis and P.T. Barnum were only a few of his famous sitters. The exhibition will recreate the atmosphere of Brady's studios in New York and Washington, D.C. during the 1840s, 1850s and 1860s, the most significant decades of his career. Every form of photography in general use during the nineteenth century will be represented. Unique daguerreotypes, stereographs, ambrotypes, Imperial salted-paper prints, cartes de visite, hand-colored prints, an original glass-plate negative, Brady's studio sample book, cameras and a posing chair and stand, as well as paintings and prints based directly on Brady's photographs, will be on display.

Mathew Brady was born in Warren County, New York, around 1823 and arrived in New York City in the early 1840s, just as the city was emerging as the nation's cultural center. He took up the new medium of photography in its earliest form, the daguerreotype, a unique, highly detailed image, made on a shiny, silver plate. In 1844, Brady established his first gallery on a prosperous section of Broadway and advertised it as a modern hall of fame. Visitors to Brady's gallery felt as if they had entered a room full of the nation's best-known citizens. Within a few years, the gallery would become one of the city's great tourist attractions.

Like most gallery owners, Brady attracted the customers and supervised studio assistants who prepared the plates, operated the cameras, and printed and embellished the images under his direction, rather than taking pictures himself. A print produced in 1849 by Henry Papprill entitled New York from the Steeple of St. Paul's Church, Looking, East, South, and West, which will be displayed at the Fogg only, represents Brady's studio among other commercial establishments at the intersection of Broadway and Fulton Street. The print illustrates the wide range of goods, services, and entertainment that was available at the time. On one rooftop a tiny figure is positioned with a camera, making his own image of the city. By 1853, Brady employed 25 workers.

Because daguerreotypes are unique images, Brady's portraits could be seen only in his gallery, or at the many competitive fairs where he won awards. In 1851, Brady traveled to London, where his daguerreotypes won a medal at the Crystal Palace Exhibition, the first world's fair. Among Brady's subjects from this early period included in the exhibition are "Swedish Nightingale" Jenny Lind, statesman Daniel Webster, and landscape painter Thomas Cole.

In 1855, Brady advertised a new kind of image, the photograph, made by shining light through a glass negative onto a piece of light-sensitive paper. According to contemporary critics, photographs united the dazzling precision of the silvery daguerreotype with the familiar characteristics of engraving or lithographs. The studio began to produce large glass negatives-nearly 20 inches high and 17 inches wide-which were named "Brady Imperials." With their grand size and beautiful range of tone and texture, Imperial images offered Brady a new way to display his talents. They remain his most enduring artistic achievement. Brady enhanced his carefully composed portraits with artistic props, such as columns and drapery, while his assistants could also add ink, chalk, watercolor or oil paint to the finished photograph. The cost of an Imperial ranged from five dollars to several hundred for the most lavish examples-at a time when many workers earned less that three hundred dollars a year. Brady Imperials which will be on view include images of sculptor Harriet Hosmer, celebrated actress Charlotte Cushman, Mexican War hero General Winfield Scott, and nature poet William Cullen Bryant.

In 1858, Brady opened a studio in Washington D.C., which flourished under the management of photographer Alexander Gardner. Two years later Gardner introduced Brady to a breakthrough in commercial photography-the carte-de-visite camera, which made multiple images on a single negative. These 3-by-2 inch "visiting cards" were sold by the millions during the 1860s. They were distributed among friends and acquaintances, but soon became part of the general culture of collecting.

Cartes de visite of political and social figures, artists, writers, and other famous individuals became common drawing room items, joining portraits of family and friends. Cartes de visite by the Brady studio which will appear in the exhibition include images of Abraham Lincoln, Edward Alpert, Prince of Whales; Mr. and Mrs. General Tom Thumb; Edwin Booth and his Daughter Edwina; and Mathew Brady himself.

Brady was at the peak of his power in 1860, when he moved his New York studio a few blocks up Broadway, and named it the National Portrait Gallery. Among the most important sitters he photographs in 1860 was an Illinois politician named Abraham Lincoln, who sat on February 27. Lincoln later said "Brady and the Cooper Union Institute made me President," referring to a widely reported speech he gave that day at New York's Cooper Union lecture hall and to the portrait, which was published nationwide.

The Civil War offered Brady the challenge of his career. He established teams of photographers who made thousands of group and individual portraits as they traveled with the Union Army. Brady had anticipated that tomorrow's heroes could be among the soldiers photographed today. He also added portraits of the War's great figures to his gallery, including General Ulysses S. Grant in 1864, shown leaning on a tree in an encampment in Virginia; and General Robert E. Lee, pictured on his back porch in Richmond, VA, in 1865-after the surrender at Appomattox. Both portraits will be in the exhibition.

Brady's business, always precarious because of his penchant for taking risks, declined after 1865. To pay his debts, he tried, unsuccessfully, to sell his massive archive. In 1872, he filed for bankruptcy and closed the New York studio. In 1875, Congress bought a substantial collection of his work for $25,000, but Brady kept a group of photographs that had been the centerpiece of his New York gallery.

For the next 20 years, Brady continued to work in Washington, but his portraits rarely demonstrated the brilliance of his pre-war career. At the end of his life, he reopened his gallery as "a museum of historical photography," and became a magnet for young journalists who sought him out as a bridge to the past, a kind of living relic. Brady broke his leg in a traffic accident in 1895, from which he never fully recovered. He died a year later and is buried in Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

Mathew Brady's Portraits: Images as History, Photography as Art is on view at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, through January 4, 1998. Generous support for the exhibition was provided by Siemens. Additional funding was provided by Discovery Communications, the Marpat Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution Special Exhibition Fund and the Smithsonian Scholarly Studies program. Funding for the exhibition's showing at the Harvard University Art Museums was provided by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency. After it closes at the Art Museums the exhibition will travel to the International Center for Photography in New York City.

RELATED EVENTS

Gallery Talks
Gallery talks are free with the price of admission to the Art Museums. Hearing assists are available for gallery talks; arrangements should be made beforehand by phoning (617) 495-8286. To request a sign language interpreter, the public should call (617) 495-2397 using Massachusetts Telephone Relay Service 1-800-439-2370 three weeks in advance of the gallery talk.

Sunday, February 1, 3:00 p.m., Fogg Art Museum
with Deborah Martin Kao, Charles C. Cunningham Sr. Associate Curator of Photographs

Sunday, February 15, 2:00 p.m., Fogg Art Museum
with Jenna Webster, research assistant, Department of Photographs

Saturday, February 28, 11:30 a.m., Fogg Art Museum
with Chelsea Foxwell, student assistant, Department of Photographs

Saturday, March 7, 11:30 a.m., Fogg Art Museum
with Deborah Martin Kao, Charles C. Cunningham Sr. Associate Curator of Photographs

Sunday, March 15, 2:00 p.m., Fogg Art Museum
with Jenna Webster, research assistant, Department of Photographs

Sunday, April 5, 2:00 p.m., Fogg Art Museum
with Chelsea Foxwell, student assistant, Department of Photographs

Concert
Civil War Songs
Sunday, April 5, Fogg Art Museum, 5:30 p.m.
$7; $5 senior citizens, $4 Friends. Doors open at 5:00 p.m., Call (617) 495-4544 for further information.
Jeffrey Goldberg, piano, and baritone accompaniment will perform an evening of Civil War Songs.
This lively program will present the historical roots, contemporary accounts, and continuing legacy of the American Civil War in music, ranging from spirituals, ragtime, and blues, to Abolitionist, Union, and Confederate songs, to the works of living composers. Featured work will be Ned Rorem's War Scenes (setting of Walt Whitman's Civil War Diaries).

Lecture Series
"The Great and the Good": Representing Celebrity in Portrait Photographs of the Nineteenth Century
Tuesdays, February 10, March 10, 31, 6:00-7:00 p.m., Fogg Art Museum $25 for the series; $20 for Friends/$10 for individual lectures; $8 for Friends. Advance registration is required-please call (617) 495-4544 to register and for information on special rates for students.
This series of lectures will explore the complex visual culture and profound social meaning of the new art of commercial celebrity portrait photography in the nineteenth century. Participants can view Mathew Brady's Portraits: Images as History, Photography as Art from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m.

Tuesday, February 10
The Failure and Success of Mathew Brady
Mary Panzer, curator of photographs, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Tuesday, March 10
Dead Heads: Portrait Aesthetics and the Shock of the Photographic During the Second Empire

Anne McCauley, professor and chair, Art Department, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Tuesday, March 31
Victorian Photographs of Famous Men and Fair Women
Joanne Lukitsh, assistant professor of art history, Massachusetts College of Art

Dinner reservations may be made at the Harvard Faculty Club, 24 Quincy Street, following these lectures by calling (617) 495-5653. The Faculty Club will kindly accept payment in cash or by credit card from non-members attending these lectures at the Fogg Art Museum. Complimentary parking will be available at the Broadway Garage on Felton Street between Broadway and Cambridge Street from 4:00 to 10:00 p.m.

Film Series

Visions of the Civil War Era
Friday March 6 at 6:30 p.m., Saturday March 7 at 7:00 p.m., Sunday March 8 at 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m.
Harvard Film Archives, Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge $6 per program; $5 for students and senior citizens, available at the door only.
Programs and times are subject to change, please consult the March/April Harvard Film Archive Calendar for final details or call (617) 495-4700.

Friday March 6 at 6:30 p.m. and Sunday March 8, at 3:00 p.m. (same program at both times)

A Pair of Boots
(US/1962/30 minutes) directed by John Cassavetes
This rarely seen television episode directed by filmmaker John Cassavetes unfolds during a Civil War armistice as Confederate and Yankee troops seek to exchange supplies and camaraderie.

The Red Badge of Courage
(US/1951/69 minutes), directed by John Huston
Stephen Crane's classic Civil War novel receives both epic and personal treatment from director Huston, exhibiting a remarkable delicacy and depth of feeling that at times approximates the visionary quality of the novel. Harold Rosson's camerawork lovingly recreates the harsh, dust-faded textures of Mathew Brady's Civil War Pictures.

Saturday March 7 at 7:00 p.m.
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
(France/l962/27 minutes) directed by Robert Enrico
Winner of an Academy Award for best short film, this exemplary illustration of subjective cinematography concerns a civil war soldier in the process of being executed by hanging.

Young Mr. Lincoln
(US/1939/100 minutes) directed by John Ford A dazzling archival print of director John Ford's moving dramatization of Abraham Lincoln's years of struggle as a beginning lawyer in the 1800s, featuring a memorable performance by Henry Fonda.

Sunday March 8 at 8:00 p.m.
Glory
(US/l990/122 minutes) directed by Ed Zwick
An exceptional account of America's first all black regiment during the Civil War and the young, inexperienced Northerner (Mathew Broderick) who's given the job of training and leading them. Based in part on the letters of that young officer, the film is brought to life with astonishing skill and believability. Grand, moving, breathtakingly filmed (by veteran cinematographer Freddie Francis) and faultlessly performed. One of the finest historical documents ever made, winning Oscars for Cinematography, Sound, and Supporting Actor (Denzel Washington).

Seminar Series
Imaging History in Antebellum America: The Portraits of Mathew B. Brady and Studio
Thursdays, March 19, April 2, 9, Fogg Art Museum Session I: 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. or session II: 6:00-7:30 p.m. $100; $75 for Friends. Advance registration is required-please call (617) 495-4544 to register.
Led by Deborah Martin Kao, Charles C. Cunningham Sr. Associate Curator of Photographs, this three-part seminar will use the exhibition Mathew Brady's Portraits: Images as History, Photography as Art as the occasion to explore the aesthetic and cultural dimensions of commercial studio photography in antebellum America. In his extravagant operations in New York City and Washington D.C., Mathew Brady orchestrated a regimen of camera operators, painters and studio artists to produce sophisticated portraits of the elite based on compositional devices and lighting strategies adopted from earlier portraiture traditions in painting. These lavish portraits functioned for both the patrons and Brady as carefully constructed status symbols that projected an atmosphere of learned and refined culture. Participants in the seminars will examine works in both the exhibition and the Mongan Center.

Participants in the evening session may make dinner reservations at the Harvard Faculty Club, 24 Quincy Street, following these seminars by calling (617) 495-5653. The Faculty Club will kindly accept payment in cash or by credit card from non-members attending these seminars at the Fogg Art Museum. Complimentary parking will be available at the Broadway Garage on Felton Street between Broadway and Cambridge Street from 4:00 to 10:00 p.m.

Exhibition Catalogue
Mathew Brady and the Image as History
by Mary Panzer
Lavishly illustrated with 79 duotone photographs and 72 black and white illustrations, this book, describes how Brady used the documentary medium of photography to portray a stable, purposeful, patriotic republic during the decades when the national identity was fragmenting. Mary Panzer charts the most productive years of Brady's career, from his emergence in 1844 as a daguerreotypist in New York to his bankruptcy in Washington, D.C. in 1872.

Mathew Brady and the Image as History. Mary Panzer. 79 duotone photographs, 72 black and white illustrations. 9x11 inches. 256 pages. Cloth: ISBN 1-56098-793-6. $39.95

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The Harvard University Art Museums' facilities are wheelchair accessible. For general information, please call (617) 495-9400. For press information or photographs, please contact Kate McShea Ewen at (617) 495-2397. For more information on events, please contact the Friends, Fellows, and Special Programs Office at (617) 495-4544. World Wide Web: www.artmuseums.harvard.edu.

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The Harvard University Art Museums comprise three museums (Busch-Reisinger Museum, Fogg Art Museum, Arthur M. Sackler Museum), all located on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, MA, at the intersection of Quincy Street and Broadway, adjacent to Harvard Yard. The Art Museums are open Monday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., and Sunday 1:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. Closed holidays. Admission is $5.00; $4.00 for senior citizens; $3.00 for students; free under 18 and on Saturday mornings. For special tour reservations, please call (617) 496-8576. General tours are offered Monday through Friday from September through June. The Fogg tour is at 11:00 a.m.; the Busch-Reisinger tour is at 1:00 p.m.; and the Sackler is at 2:00 p.m.

The Harvard University Art Museums is supported in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

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