Skip to main content

Alexander Gardner

Alexander Gardner
Artist
James Gardner, 1832 - ?
Sitter
Alexander Gardner, 17 Oct 1821 - 10 Dec 1882
Date
1863
Type
Photograph
Medium
Albumen silver print
Dimensions
Image/Sheet: 8.6 x 5.5cm (3 3/8 x 2 3/16")
Mount: 10.1 x 5.9cm (4 x 2 5/16")
Mat: 45.7 x 35.6cm (18 x 14")
Topic
Home Furnishings\Furniture\Seating\Chair
Personal Attribute\Facial Hair\Beard
Photographic format\Carte-de-visite
Alexander Gardner: Male
Alexander Gardner: Visual Arts\Artist\Photographer
Alexander Gardner: Visual Arts\Artist\Photographer\War photographer
Portrait
Credit Line
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Larry J. West
Restrictions & Rights
CC0
Object number
NPG.2007.62
Exhibition Label
Gardner’s gallery and colleagues
The nation’s capital was a center for photography during the war, and Alexander Gardner set up his new studio in May 1863 at Seventh and D Streets, just a few blocks from that of his former employer, Mathew Brady. Gardner split with Brady after the success of his Antietam photographs. The signage gives a full range of Gardner’s services, showing how he catered to the market for photographic images; the main sign reads “News of the War.”
Not as flamboyantly costumed as in his first self-portrait, this image of Alexander Gardner shows him as a workingman, which was his family’s heritage back in Scotland. Gardner’s proficiency as a photographer was based in part on his manual dexterity; he was a master at coating the glass-plate negatives with collodion, which formed the plate’s light-sensitive emulsion. By the beginnings of 1863 James Gardner was working with his brother in Washington.
Timothy O’Sullivan (1840–1882) and his brother-in-law, William Pywell (1843–1886), also got their start with Brady. O’Sullivan teamed up with Gardner both at Antietam and Gettysburg and later had a successful career on his own. After the war, Pywell traveled west with Gardner to photograph the plains and the Native Americans living there.
Data Source
National Portrait Gallery
Location
Currently not on view