Adams photo heralded as crucial find

time — sat for a photographer in upstate New York and pronounced the results “all hideous.”

Unfortunately for him, a daguerreotype from that sitting surfaced in 1970 at an antiques shop, priced at 50 cents; it currently sits in the National Portrait Gallery — where it laid claim to being the oldest surviving original photograph of an American president.

But now, an older — and more flattering — daguerreotype of Adams, the sixth U. S. president, has surfaced. It will be sold at auction in October at Sotheby’s.

The daguerreotype, which carries a price estimate of $150,000 to $250,000, was taken in a Washington portrait studio in March 1843, when Adams was in the middle of his

post-presidential career in Congress. He gave it as a gift to a fellow representative, whose descendants kept it in the family but apparently lost track of its significance.

Emily Bierman, head of Sotheby’s photographs department, called it “without a doubt the most important historical photo portrait to be offered at auction in the last 20 years.”

“Not only is it an incredibly important historical record; it’s also a stunning composition," she said. "You really get a sense of who Adams was.”

Claims of historical precedence tend to come with caveats and asterisks — and it must be noted that the daguerreotype, a so-called half plate measuring about 5 inches by 4 inches, is not, technically, the earliest photographic image of an American president.

That honor belongs to William Henry Harrison, who had his likeness taken in 1841, around the time of his inauguration. He died of an uncertain illness 32 days into his term, and the original daguerreotype isn't known to have survived, although the Metropolitan Museum of Art owns a copy, made about 1850.

The newly surfaced Adams daguerreotype also doesn't offer a wholly fresh view of the man. The same penetrating gaze, heavily whiskered jaw and elegant parlor backdrop are visible in an image also owned by the Met.

But that image is a reproduction, by Southworth and Hawes, from an original daguerreotype that has apparently been lost. And it shows Adams sitting in a slightly different pose.

“I keep getting caught on his cute socks,” said Bierman, noting the white patch peeking out from a trouser cuff in the newly surfaced daguerreotype (and less visible in the image at the Met). “There is something so human about that.”

The seller, a greatgreat-grandson of Everett who didn't want to be named to preserve his family’s privacy, found it among his parents’ belongings after they died in the 1990s. He assumed it was an image of a forebear, he said, and only realized a few years ago — after some internet research — that it was Adams.

The price on the halfplate daguerreotype could go much higher than the estimate. In 2011, a whole-plate daguerreotype portrait of the states-rights advocate and former Vice President John C. Calhoun, taken by Matthew Brady, fetched $338,500, including the buyer’s premium — nine times its estimate.

Bierman said she hoped the daguerreotype’s emergence would prompt people to review old photographs in their possession.

Perhaps other missing Adams daguerreotypes — or even the original plate of Harrison — will surface.

“So much is considered lost," she said, "until it’s found."