Mathew Brady, Juliet "Julia" Brady and Ellen Brady Haggerty

Throughout his career Mathew Brady sought recognition as an artist. He advertised his skills as a maker of pleasing images and promised his clientele results that would rival “the highest efforts of the painter.” This daguerreotype exhibits the careful lighting, pleasing symmetry, and naturalness of expression that earned Brady the admiration of his contemporaries. It depicts him with his wife, Julia (left), and his sister, Ellen (right), in a pose that underscores their strong familial bond. When Ellen Haggerty was widowed a few years after this portrait was made, the Bradys—who had no children of their own—adopted Ellen’s young son, Thomas.