Daguerreotype of a seated gentleman wearing a silk cravat, velvet waistcoat and woollen overcoat. Sydney, 1854-55.

A$14,000 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Sixth-plate daguerreotype with applied colour, 70 x 60 mm (sight); in a round-cornered square brass mat and ormolu preserver, the mat stamped at lower right GOW / 253 GEORGE ST. ; housed in a half leather case with embossed floral design; the daguerreotype has some minor oxidisation at the right- and left-hand edges but is otherwise in fine condition. An extremely rare example of a portrait by Sydney daguerreotypist James Gow. The only James Gow daguerreotype we have been able to trace in Australian public collections is the portrait of James Allpress, tipstaff at the Supreme Court, held in the Powerhouse Collection (Object No. H5572-3). According to the DAAO, Gow was in partnership in San Francisco in 1851-52 with engraver Robert W. Fishbourne as photographers and lithographers. The pair produced illustrated gold fields letter paper, a panorama of San Francisco and a view of the burnt out city in 1851. In Sydney in 1853 Gow advertised with Richard H. Acley, who had possibly travelled with Gow from San Francisco. Gow and Acley opened a studio at rented premises in Pitt Street, offering daguerreotypes of all kinds. The following advertisement appeared in the SMH , 19 February 1853: MESSRS. GOW AND ACLEY (from America) have opened rooms in Pitt-street, over Mr. Mort s Auction Room, for taking Daguerreotype Portraits with the most improved American apparatus, and at such prices that all persons may be enabled to have their likenesses taken. Portraits, miniatures, landscapes, and

• Binding: Hardcover

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