Charles Loring Elliott

Regarded by his contemporaries as one of the nation’s finest portraitists, Charles Loring Elliott painted more than seven hundred portraits representing many of mid-nineteenth-century America’s most prominent businessmen, political leaders, and cultural figures. Elliott “spoke enthusiastically of the Daguerreian art” and strove to match the clarity and detail of photographic images in his paintings. Not surprisingly, he often employed daguerreotypes—including those from the studio of his friend Mathew Brady—as the sources for his portraits.