Sixth-plate daguerreotype plate housed within a hand-cut, gilt-bordered folded paper mat and cover glass, enclosed in a very early top-hinged "flip-top" miniature leather case lined with rich plum velvet. Attributed to Matthew Van Loan, Granite Building, New York City, ca. 1841 - 1842. Plate measures approx. 2 3/4 x 3 1/4 in.; case measures approx. 3 1/4 x 3 3/4 in.

An extraordinary artifact from the absolute infancy of American photography, capturing an 18th-century frontiersman, Indian Wars officer, and War of 1812 general who died in February 1843.

The seated portrait depicts General Reasin Beall in advanced age, posed in a dark tailored coat, white standing collar, and wide black stock cravat. The attribution to pioneer New York daguerreotypist Matthew Van Loan is supported by composition and physical evidence: to the sitter's right sits the classic Neoclassical studio urn characteristic of Van Loan’s earliest work, matching an almost identical, stamped sister variant taken during the same sitting. Van Loan acquired his first studio in the Granite Building directly from photography pioneers John Johnson and Alexander Wolcott when Wolcott departed for London in July 1841. By 1842, Van Loan advertised "photographics" at 73 Chambers Street before establishing galleries on Broadway and the Bowery, eventually migrating westward in the Gold Rush to San Francisco in 1851.

Reasin Beall (1769 - 1843) was an iconic figure of the early American frontier. Born in Montgomery County, Maryland, on 3 December 1769, Beall served under General Josiah Harmar in the 1790 Northwest Indian War campaign and received an appointment as Ensign in the United States Army on 7 March 1792. He was promoted to Battalion Quartermaster in 1793, serving under General "Mad" Anthony Wayne in the Legion of the United States through the brutal wilderness campaigns that culminated in the Battle of Fallen Timbers.

Beall was commissioned Brigadier General of Ohio Volunteers during the War of 1812, when he organized and commanded regional forces tasked with defending the exposed Ohio and Northwest frontier following Hull’s surrender of Detroit. He was later elected as a Democratic-Republican to the Thirteenth United States Congress in 1813 and served until his resignation in 1814, later serving as register of the land office in Wooster, Ohio, and casting his vote as a Presidential Elector on the victorious Whig ticket for William Henry Harrison in 1840. He died in Wooster, Wayne County, Ohio, on 20 February 1843.

Because General Beall died in1843, this daguerreotype can be definitively dated between the summer of 1841 and late 1842, firmly placing it in the infancy era of the medium. Very few individuals born in the 1760s survived long enough to sit before a photographic lens, making this plate an irreplaceable document of early American history and primitive daguerreian art.

[Daguerreotype, Incunabula Photography, Matthew Van Loan, Alexander Wolcott, John Johnson, Reasin Beall, War of 1812, General, Anthony Wayne, Fallen Timbers, Legion of the United States, Northwest Indian War, Ohio, Wooster Ohio, 13th Congress, Flip-Top Case, Paper Mat, 1840s Photography]

Good condition for a daguerreotype plate of this antiquity. The plate displays heavy, natural perimeter tarnish and scattered silver spotting characteristic of pioneer photography. Image retains its rare, primitive hand-cut paper mat with honest edge oxidation and toning. Original flip-top leather case is intact with spine rubbing and functional closure hook.