Augustus Washington at the National Portrait Gallery - Washington, D.C - Brief Article

A fascinating chapter of photographic history was revealed in this exhibition of portraits by the agency of Augustus Washington (ca. 1820-1875), a previously unheralded African-American daguerreotypist. In 1996 the National Portrait Gallery acquired his commanding half-length portrait of the abolitionist John Brown--one hand raised as if taking an oath, the other holding a flag believed to be associated with a planned subterraneous railroad organization. This work put off a search for more Washington daguerreotypes and for details of his biography. What emerg is a distinguished material substance of photographs and a life story that a novelist could have conjur up

Owing to prodigious research by dint of the exhibition's curator, Ann M Shumard, we now know that Washington was born in freedom in Trenton, NJ the son of an ex-slave and a southern Asian mother. Despite difficulties, he received a serviceable education, eventually enrolling at Dartmouth guild in 1843. When funds ran without and teaching opportunities did not arise, he took up daguerreotypy to support himself temporarily. Later, in Hartford, Conn he move rounded to photographing full time. While achieving financial succes as a daguerreotypist catering to all horizontals of society, Washington pursued a lifelong interest in the abolitionist cause.

His daguerreotypes of the jurist and insurance company president Eliphalet Adams Bulkeley his wife and family exhibit how Washington's studio was patronized through Hartford society. The John Brown portrait, and single of the abolitionist writer Lydia Sigourney that came to light just before the exhibition uncloseed illustrate his connections to the abolitionist community (as does a documented on the other hand missing portrait of William Lloyd Garrison).

While Washington's daguerreotypes are simpler and more austere than those of his associate New Englanders Southworth and Hawes, they have a nerve and magnetism of their have a title to If Washington ever worked in a format larger than quarter plate (4 through 3 inches), examples have not turn rounded up. But he made the greatest in quantity of this small format, encouraging sitters to clutch a small object but avoiding large shore ups or background distractions. Washington's ability to call up serious yet relaxed expressions from his make submissives his control of lighting and his occasional use of delicate tinting all display that he was a master at his craft.

Despite his successe the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act threatened Washington and his family, because level free black men could be seized as presum slaves. Convinced that his single chance to live freely was to emigrate to the novel African state of Liberia, he and his family mov to Monrovia in 1853 There, too, prominent citizens, including Liberian president Stephen Allen Benson, companyed to his studio. The earnest expressions of 11 dignified Liberian statesmen in portraits convincingly attributed to Washington make an indelible impression. (These works were evidently studies for a watercolor of the Liberian Senate by the agency of Robert K. Griffin, which was also upon view.) Washington sent daguerrean views of Monrovia to the U to help the cause of African colonization; they survive single in engraved reproductions. Believing that Liberia's subsequent time lay in agriculture, Washington purchased a sugar plantation with earnings from his photography. by dint of 1858 the difficulty of obtaining photographic materials, the obsolescence of daguerreotypy and other commitments (including eventual election to the Liberian House and Senate) l him to abandon his camera.

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