Quarter-plate studio portrait daguerreotype. N.p., ca. early-to-mid 1850s. Housed in a full dark brown leatherette case. Interior lid retains an unembossed royal purple silk facing pad.

Provenance: Sold at Pook and Pook Auctions (October 27th, 2023, Lot 6839). 

Compelling portrait of an aged gentleman identified as Revolutionary War veteran Lemuel Cook. Posed facing three-quarters to the left, he gazes off-camera with a haunting expression, his close-cropped white hair swept forward across his brow. He is dressed in formal mid-19th-century attire: a dark tailored frock over a dark waistcoat, a stiff white standing collar, and a wide dark neckcloth neatly tied at the throat.

Lemuel Cook of North Clarendon, New York, enlisted in the 2nd Continental Light Dragoons at age 16, saw action at Brandywine and Yorktown, and lived to the remarkable age of 107, becoming celebrated in the 1860s as one of the last surviving pensioned veterans of the American Revolution (most famously documented in Rev. E.B. Hillard’s landmark 1864 work, The Last Men of the Revolution). 

[Daguerreotype, Quarter Plate, Revolutionary War, American Revolution, Veteran, Centenarian, Lemuel Cook, Continental Army, 2nd Light Dragoons, Hillard, Last Men of the Revolution, Elderly Gentleman, White Hair, Cased Image, 1850s Photography, Early Americana]

Very good condition. The daguerreotype exhibits fine clarity, smooth tones, and strong contrast. The plate shows a ring of iridescent deep blue and gold perimeter tarnish hugging the inner mat oval.