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| Passion Investments: Art |
Distant Mirrors
Richard John Pietschmann
11/01/2005
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Perhaps 90 percent of daguerreotypes (also called “dags” and “cased images”)
were portraits. The personages of the day—Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Brown,
Daniel Webster, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe, among others—sat
for them. So did millions of ordinary people. “These small, lovely cased images
possess the almost supernatural ability to connect us visually to the past, and
in a very physical sense as well,” Kite says.
 | | A PORTRAIT of Albert Sands Southworth, circa 1840, valued at more than $100,000. (Photo courtesy of Dennis Waters.) |
At the zenith of the process in
1853, Romer estimates, 3 million to 4 million daguerreotypes were made in the
United States—in a nation with perhaps 25 million people. “There were more
daguerreotypes made in America than anywhere else,” he says—about 15 million of
them in total. The heyday was brief. Daguerreotypy flourished through the 1840s
and into the 1850s, but then fell victim to its shortcomings. The plates were
small (standard “sixth” plates measure 23¼4 by 31¼4 inches; full plates just
61¼2 by 81¼2 inches), they were relatively heavy and bulky in their cases and
they required a carefully placed light source for optimal viewing. Crucially,
the positive-plate technology meant only one picture could be produced per
exposure.
Other more advanced photographic processes, such as tintypes,
gradually diminished the appeal of daguerreotypes. In the early 1860s, glass
negative-based paper photography matured to allow multiple exact copies of every
exposure. This breakthrough allowed photographer and former daguerreotypist
Mathew Brady to create and distribute what would become the defining photographs
of the Civil War. In fewer than 20 years, daguerreotypy went from phenomenon to
international craze to obsolete technology.
“DAGUERREOTYPE
collecting has clearly
moved out of the realm of the
antiquarian to the
forefront of the
photography market.
While the
whole
daguerreotype market has moved upward, the top of the market
has moved upward exponentially.” |
The millions of plates left
behind in parlors, attics and basements endured decades of disregard.
Undervalued artistically and historically, they were ignored by museums in
particular. Many were discarded as worthless, and they routinely suffered from
neglect and mistreatment. They showed up in bins in antique stores, priced at a
few dollars each. “Up to 15 years ago, the daguerreotype market had a
flea-market sensibility,” says New Hampshire collector and Internet dealer
Dennis Waters.
That all changed as collectors such as Isenburg began to
spur appreciation of daguerreotype photographs beyond their tchotchke status.
High-profile, high-price auctions in the late 1990s confirmed their appeal. Perloff recently
surveyed his publication’s database and found that the top 30 auction prices
paid for daguerreotypes have all appeared since 1996, and the top 10 were
recorded since 1999. Christie’s London 2003 auction of French daguerreotypist
Girault de Prangey’s images of Greek, Egyptian and Roman antiquities made in
1842 and 1843 produced the top three, including $922,488 paid for the image of
the Temple of Jupiter in Athens. Each of the trio of plates more than tripled
its preauction estimate.
 | | SOUTHWORTH & HAWES portrait of Harriet Beecher Stowe, circa 1843. (Photo courtesy of George Eastman House.) |
“The best pieces are bringing more than we could
possibly have imagined,” Bethel says. “If you look at the presale estimate for
the last 10 years for any major piece, even the most aggressive estimates were
left in the dust.”
However, according to Waters, these sensational
daguerreotypes—the large-format dramatic examples with artistic and historical
value and in superb condition—are a miniscule part of the overall market. Romer
estimates that approximately 1,500 masterpiece plates exist. Sotheby’s Bethel
thinks there are only hundreds if daguerreotypes held by institutions and
companies and in unshakable private collections are removed from
consideration.
Waters says the best examples currently command $250,000 or
more (his top sale so far: $300,000), but the market quickly falls into the
$75,000 to $150,000 range. Then, he says, prices drop rapidly to the $10,000
level. The bulk of the daguerreotype market runs between $200 and $4,000, but
common portraits in middling condition are available for $100 or less.
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