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| D02-139. LATE FOR FITZ! A very endearing image of grandma holding her 8-year-old granddaughter's hand in her lap. The little girl leaned in the direction of the ample woman's side. Her natural curiosity bursts out at us when we examine her perfect hazel eyes that watched an object beyond the plane of the camera. Her small soft lips were gently pressed together; ready to shift into a broad grin at any instant, after the archivally taped sixth plate was taken in the first half of 1843. The matronly lady's darker brown eyes intently followed Henry Fitz's movements around the camera, freezing during the moment of truth when the Baltimore daguerreian uncapped his lens. In fact, Fitz was one of America's earliest experimenters in the art. His tiny tightly cropped bust self portrait shows Fitz outdoors in direct sunlight with his eyes closed. Ross Kelbaugh, a Baltimore historian and admirer of fine daguerreotypes noted in an article about his city's daguerreians that Fitz began offering colored dags in October 1842, but sold his studio and moved back to NYC after a few months, when his new innovation proved to be unsuccessful. Yet here we have the only extant example that I have ever seen, where his coloration system was in direction competition with the earliest tinted examples from John Plumbe's east coast galleries. The outrageous sculpted sixth sized mat was only used by one operator and it is stamped H. Fitz Jr. One large orange mold spider and several smaller ones, along with deep blue patina are visible. Deep polishing marks are also seen. I don't know what caused the faint brown area on the woman's blouse or that diagonal drip line. My notations on the archival seal are: "A medium weight plate with no hallmark. The sides are flat and each hand cut corner is crimped slightly upwards." I purchased their portrait in 2002 as one of the late stars in my very early collection of daguerreotypes. The cover is missing and there is no design in the leather. $8,500 |
