lifedates unknown
This rare example of an Imperial photograph with added pigment most certainly cost several hundred dollars, at a time when the cheapest studios sold photographic portraits for twenty-five cents. The colorist is unknown; Brady's assistants never signed their work. In 1857, one critic observed that portraits like these "are indebted to the painter and not to the photographer, and we regret that the artist has not been permitted to attach his name to each picture, that we might give the credit . . . to whom it belongs." Though we know the subject, Mr. Tredwell's, name, we know nothing else about him -- aside from the fact that he we was prosperous enough to commission a very elaborate portrait from Mathew Brady.
Mathew Brady Studio Imperial salted-paper with added color, circa 1860
50 x 42.5 cm (19 11/16 x 16 3/4 inches); 29 x 23 inches framed
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts, on deposit from Harvard College Library; bequest of Evert Jansen Wendell