id: 153709 accession number: 1987.220 share license status: CC0 url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1987.220 updated: 2023-04-23 11:15:58.796000 Prosper M. Wetmore, 1857. Mathew Brady (American, 1823–1896). Salted paper print from wet collodion negative; image: 47 x 39.4 cm (18 1/2 x 15 1/2 in.); matted: 66 x 55.9 cm (26 x 22 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund 1987.220 title: Prosper M. Wetmore title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1857 creation date earliest: 1857 creation date latest: 1857 current location: creditline: John L. Severance Fund copyright: --- culture: America, 19th century technique: salted paper print from wet collodion negative department: Photography collection: PH - American 19th Century type: Photograph find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * Mathew Brady (American, 1823–1896) - artist Mathew Brady American, 1823 - 1896 Mathew B. Brady was born in Lake George, New York, where he received instruction in art from itinerant painter William Page. He is said to have been introduced to daguerreotyping by Samuel F. B. Morse, the American portraitist and inventor, who was a friend of Page and an early advocate of photography. Brady is believed to have also studied with John W. Draper, another important American daguerrean pioneer. While Brady is best known today for his Civil War work, he was also among the most successful portraitists of his time. He first opened a studio in New York City in 1844, then a Washington studio in 1847, and two others in New York in 1853 and 1860. Ever aware of history and celebrity, as early as 1845 he conceived an ambitious series of published portraits to be called The Gallery of Illustrious Americans. The lithographed images, derived from Brady's daguerreotypes and accompanied by explanatory texts, drew attention and acclaim, and initiated his association with celebrated sitters. The series, however, failed to receive adequate backing for completion. Like many commercial photographers, Brady employed "operators" -- technicians and artists who worked with him and often took his pictures. Brady and other photographic entrepreneurs took responsibility for overseeing their studios, marketing prints, and devoting themselves to their most important clients and images. It was Brady's innovation, at the outbreak of the Civil War, to outfit and send a number of talented operators into the field. The thousands of negatives produced of the war's great generals and battlefields by Brady's firm are thus usually not the work of the famed photographer himself, but rather that of George S. Cook, Alexander Gardner, Levin Handy, Michael Miley, and Timothy O'Sullivan. Nevertheless, Brady played a key role in envisioning and executing the immense enterprise of photographing the Civil War. For example, he produced a number of portraits of Abraham Lincoln, who avowed that without Brady to present him to the American public, he would have had considerably greater difficulty becoming known. T.W.F. --- measurements: Image: 47 x 39.4 cm (18 1/2 x 15 1/2 in.); Matted: 66 x 55.9 cm (26 x 22 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: inscription: Written in pencil on verso: "M. Wetmore Prosper M; in black ink: "4"; in blue chalk: "30"; in blue chalk: on label typed in purple ink: "Prosper M. Wetmore."; in pencil on recto of mount: two indistinguishable marks translation: remark: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: The Year in Review for 1987 opening date: 1988-02-24T05:00:00 The Year in Review for 1987. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 24-April 17, 1988). title: Legacy of Light: Master Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art opening date: 1996-11-24T05:00:00 Legacy of Light: Master Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 24, 1996-February 2, 1997). title: Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art opening date: 2007-06-24T00:00:00 Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 24-September 16, 2007); Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh, PA (October 3, 2009-January 3, 2010). title: Cheating Death: Portrait Photography’s First Half Century opening date: 2016-10-22T04:00:00 Cheating Death: Portrait Photography’s First Half Century. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 22, 2016-February 5, 2017). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS --- PROVENANCE George Reinhardt, New York date: footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: digital description: wall description: A popular author, legislator, and general in the New York State militia, Wetmore, here at age 59, still resembles Edgar Allen Poe’s description of him from a decade earlier: “about five feet eight in height, slender, neat; with an air of military compactness.” Brady’s portrait studio, with branches in New York and Washington, DC, was the most important of its era in America, thanks in part to its success in photographing political, social, and cultural figures. These early celebrity portraits, such as those of the wedding of performer Tom Thumb (seen in the center of the gallery), could sell thousands of copies. Brady is now best known for images of the Civil War, most taken by photographers he hired. --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS Turner, Evan H. "The Year in Review for 1987." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 75, no. 2 (1988): 30-71. page number: p. 66, no. 42, repr. p. 59 url: www.jstor.org/stable/25160017 Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996. page number: Reproduced: P. 107 url: --- IMAGES web: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1987.220/1987.220_web.jpg print: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1987.220/1987.220_print.jpg full: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1987.220/1987.220_full.tif