Dolley Madison Daguerreotype by John Plumbe, Jr.

In this episode of 'Why They Put That in a Museum,' hosts Beth Bacon and Sarah Lees discuss a rare 1846 daguerreotype of Dolley Madison recently acquired by National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC. Dolley Madison was the wife of the fourth U.S. President, James Madison. What is a daguerreotype? To answer that question, they do a quick overview of early photography and some of the inventor-artists who got this technology started using glass and silver-plated copper sheets. What’s cool about this portrait was that it was almost lost to time. It was discovered in a basement! Then it was sent to auction where it sold at 4 times the asking price. Why is it so valuable? Listen to the fascinating story of this unique and beautiful image of one of the most beloved First Ladies in US history. Daguerreotype of Dolley Madison: Early Photography. 

© 2025 Why'd They Put That In A Museum podcast hosts Beth Bacon and Sarah Lees.

Transcript

Transcript: Daguerrotype of Dolley Madison By John Plumbe in the National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Beth Bacon: Hello, I am Beth Bacon, an avid museum goer and an author of books for young readers. 

Sarah Lees: I'm Sarah Lees. I'm a museum curator and researcher. And this is “Why’d They Put That In A Museum.” 

Beth Bacon: Great. Okay! Today we are going to go back in time a little bit and talk about a daguerreotype of Dolley Madison. And if you don't know what any of that means, stick around. 

Sarah Lees: What we're here to do is talk about art and objects and museums and what happens when you put them together and invite people in to look.

Beth Bacon: You know, sometimes I walk through a gallery and I wonder why is this object here? So in this podcast, we're diving deep into the stories behind some of the artifacts that we find kind of interesting.

Sarah Lees: Right, so for each episode, we'll start with one thing in one specific place, and then sort of wander off from there, exploring the thing and its history and the cultural ideas that surround it to see where they take us. And eventually, usually coming back to the original thing, and then seeing if it looks or feels different as a result of what we have discovered.

Beth Bacon: It's amazing how different an object seems once you know the cultural, historical background and sometimes the unexpected reasons these objects came to be on display. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah. So, and just to say also, we're going to be talking about things that you can't see, at least in this audio only format. Um, and there's only so much that we can actually describe in words, although we're going to try. So we'll also always mention where the real object actually lives. And we'll try to provide a link to it when we can so you can at least call up an image, while you listen or maybe afterwards. And then hopefully you can go see it in person because I have to say, there is no substitute for the in-person experience. Especially nowadays when you can find images of everything that exists in the world and lots of stuff that doesn't actually exist, we definitely recommend making the effort to see the art or the object or whatever it is in the museum in person if you can. 

Beth Bacon: So today we're going to be talking about an early photograph. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah. So this is a work that was made by a man named John Plumbe Jr. And perhaps more importantly, at least for our interest, it is a photograph of Dolley Madison. actually a daguerreotype, which is a form of early photography.

Beth Bacon: A daguerreotype. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah. 

Beth Bacon: That's, that's an interesting word. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah. And a super interesting photograph too with an incredible story. Um, it's the kind of thing that was almost lost to time. 

Beth Bacon: Lost to time. Huh. But it's been found. 

Sarah Lees:It has been found and we're going to look at it. 

Beth Bacon: Okay, let's get to it.

Sarah Lees: Yes, so, just a few months ago, I think, I read in the New York Times, that the National Portrait Gallery in Washington had just acquired a daguerreotype of Dolley Madison, who was the wife of the fourth President of the United States, James Madison. This image was created in 1846. and it is thought to be the earliest photograph of a first lady. in existence, although there are actually about, six photographs of Dolley Madison that are known. she was apparently like a very prominent figure. she outlived her husband by a bunch of years, but she was still like really well known about town. People loved her and thought of her even still as like the first lady. So, you know, the fact that there is a photograph of her, she was obviously sort of an important person historically.  I Guess we should try to describe what it is we're talking about, right? 

Beth Bacon: And actually first, can you define what a daguerreotype is and how that is a certain kind of photograph? 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, absolutely. So this is, I mean, I love this stuff, even though my knowledge of it is somewhat imperfect, but it's a really fascinating process. So photography as we know it, was kind of invented, although really announced to the world in 1839. So not all that long ago, like, 150 some odd years. and the thing is that people knew well before that, that if you allowed light to pass through sort of a pinhole onto a smooth surface, you would see an image of the thing on the other side of the pinhole, if that makes sense, even though it would be upside down and reversed.

So that physics of it can get complicated, but, um, there were things called like, um, camera obscura, which just means dark room in, Latin. 

Beth Bacon: So the word camera just means room?

Sarah Lees: Camera just means room. Exactly. the issue was since light is what created, The image. How can you possibly freeze that?

Like, there's no way to put it on something. And so that is what, in 1839, was announced to the French Academy of Science. Now, I will say, there were a number of different people involved. were working on figuring out this problem at roughly the same time. And they were mostly, a lot of them were kind of amateur scientists, because this was really a science problem, right?

It's about chemicals and surfaces and stuff. and one of them was named Joseph Nicéphale Niépce. Wow, people named to pronounce. Yeah. So here's a French guy. and his assistant was named Jacques Louis Molde Daguerre. So they were working on this problem in the 1830s along with a handful of other people.

one of whom was an Englishman called William Henry Fox Talbot. so they actually came up with different solutions for how to fix an image created out of light. But basically, Niepce died in 1833, Daguerre continued to, like, improve the process that Niepce had invented. So then it was Daguerre in 1839, thankfully, because nobody can say Niepce, who got to put his name on this invention, which is why it's called a Daguerreotype, 

Beth Bacon: So it maybe could have been a Niepce type. 

Sarah Lees:  Yeah, daguerreotype. A little, a little challenging. 

Daguerreotype is also kind of hard, I think, for the American palate, but. It is 

Sarah Lees: True. It is true. Daguerreotype. In any case. But so what it is that we're talking about is basically daguerre took a polished sheet of  silver plated copper. So a thin surface of silver polished to a mirror-like shine. He then treated that plate with chemical fumes so that it became light sensitive. And here's where I don't fully know the science. and then that little sheet or plate is what he placed behind a pinhole type setup. You don't have to have a whole room by the way, you could just, now it could just be like a black box essentially, which is more what we think of as a camera. In that way, he actually managed to get an image made of light to register on this silver plated piece of metal. Exposure times were long. It could be maybe up to 10 minutes even to get kind of a bright outdoor scene. Certainly if you were, like, inside a room, it would take even longer. Um, but, you know.

Beth Bacon: So Dolley Madison had to sit still for a long time. More than 10 minutes. 

Sarah Lees: Well, here's the thing. So that's in 1839. But already the technology gets developed, gets, you know, worked on more and more because people realize –

Beth Bacon: You can use develop. I like the pun. It's okay. You can keep using it. 

Sarah Lees: Okay. It was developed. Oh, wait, there's one more thing that I have to say about this. Because part of the reason that people wanted to continue to improve on this process is that, you know, I said you had this little plate coated with silver and exposed to gas and stuff. If you can imagine, however, that image is adhered to that surface, it's going to be super delicate and very easy to smudge. And you can see this on some daguerreotypes, if you ever get a chance to see one, their surfaces are imperfect. So what you have to do is then encase that little sheet in a case with a piece of glass over the front. So basically when you see a daguerreotype, when we look at this, the daguerreotype of Dolley Madison.  We're looking at a little case, and if you look up, you can search the image online, um, I don't think it's on the National Portrait Gallery's website yet, I could be wrong, but you'll find it online, and you see like a little, it looks like a little jewel case, it opens, you know, in half.  So the image itself it's probably about like just four inches tall and maybe three inches wide. And you see like a little, it looks like a little jewel case. It opens, you know, in half. The photograph is on the right side of the little case, and the cases often got pretty elaborately decorated, like this one is, it's got like skull work and stuff, and, you know, you kind of have leather binders and things, they're elaborate kind of relic like objects, right? The other thing, of course, is that they are unique. If you go through this process, you have your plate, your metal plate, and a black box, you only get one image. There's no negative. The way if you know about 20th century photography, you get a negative you can print multiple times. This is a unique object. 

The other cool thing is it still kind of looks like a mirror. So the archetypes are really, they're super cool. If you get to see one in a museum, first of all, they have to be lit properly, because if they're not lit, then you can't see the image. But if you move your head around, it kind of shines as if there is a mirror surface. And the images themselves are super clear. You know, we often think of photographs on paper and the paper surface can give it a bit of a texture, but this is like an image on a mirror. So it's—the details are incredible, which people appreciated at the time. So Dolley Madison, back to this, her photograph was actually taken by an American photographer named John Plumbe. And by the way, Plumbe invented his own process and called it a Plumbiotype. 

Beth Bacon: Plumbiotype. That's one I've never heard of. 

Sarah Lees: Um, yeah. But yeah, it was developed.

Beth Bacon: I thought you were gonna say he invented plumbing, but that's probably not… a totally different thing.

Sarah Lees: The thing is, you develop  a new process, you get to put your name on it. Yeah. Anyway, he was quite successful, apparently had a whole—'cause he was still using the daguerreotype-like process. So he opened a whole string of studios across the US. Well, it was the Eastern US. And one of them was in Washington, D. C. in the 1840s. In 1846. So this is just less than 10 years after the whole process of photography was announced. Dolley Madison probably went to his studio, John Plumbe Studio, to get her photograph taken. 

The pose time, maybe under 10 minutes, probably. but that's probably a good ballpark. And the other thing, sometimes in old photographs, you might see there's like a metal stand that people have around their necks to keep their heads still. Because the length of exposure time was so long that, you know, even if you like twitch or wiggle a little bit, the photo would turn out blurry. So sometimes you'll see  that prop that helps people stay still. Not in this one. 

Beth Bacon: Yeah.

Sarah Lees: No, not in this one. Dolley Madison is like dressed in, apparently she liked to crochet or knit. So you can see like she has this knitted shawl around her shoulders with a really neat pattern that you can get a sense of looking at this daguerreotype. She's got kind of a turban on, oh my gosh, and I read this somewhere, she has a really high collar on her shirt, because it's something like, and I'm totally paraphrasing, but she said like, “Once you get, you know, to a certain age, you kind of want to cover up that anatomy. Cover up your neck.” 

Beth Bacon: I've had that sense every once in a while. 

Sarah Lees: I know, right? No, wait, let's not go there. I don't know what you mean. 

Beth Bacon: yeah, because she must have been fairly old because if she was, the fourth president's wife, the fourth president was probably in the early 1800s. And, you know, this is now 1846. This is the mid 1800s. So she was at least  several decades after she was first lady. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, absolutely. But again, she was still, lady about town. Um, and 

Beth Bacon: yeah, I think she was kind of famous for having a lot of parties, right? 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, I think that's right. it is interesting, like to think about who would have had this photograph. because often people would give them to their friends as sort of keepsakes mementos. there was also very quickly, almost like a market for celebrity portraits, but I think that happened. After the process of photography moved on even further and you could get multiple so that happened in about the 1850’s.

There were more people like there was a French photographer called these dairy who actually invented a type of camera with multiple lenses, you could take about 6 to 8 different shots at the same time, or even did it where they're like different poses on the same piece of paper. And then those people could use them like visiting cards. You could get sort of a whole sack of them and hand them to friends and stuff. But this daguerreotype is not quite like that, because it is just the one thing

Beth Bacon: So, let's get back to the original question. Why do they put that in a museum? I can guess, A, it's a portrait, and the portrait gallery acquired it, and B, she was famous. Um, but still, was there anything more? 

Sarah Lees: Well, I think the fact that it is a unique object. It's a record of a historic person, but also the state of technology, advanced stage of technology, in 1846, was to get your portrait photograph taken. And, you know, most museums would be happy to have the only thing like it.

Although it is also interesting, there is another image of her wearing the same clothing and a slightly different pose. So she must've been at the portrait studio and taken at least two photographs at the same time. So she was out there for 20 minutes, half an hour. 

Beth Bacon: And where is that one?

Sarah Lees: The Maine Historical Society, actually. 

Beth Bacon: The Maine Historical Society?

Sarah Lees: Yeah. 

Beth Bacon: Were the Madisons from Maine? 

Sarah Lees: I do not know. That's a good question. But I think it just, so, well, I mean, first of all, here's the way that the one of the National Portrait Gallery got there…

Beth Bacon:Yeah, how did it get there? 

Sarah Lees: It was in somebody's own personal collection for years, at least according to, well, I'll get to that in a minute. And then that person passed away, and apparently their relatives were like cleaning out the basement and found this photograph in this person's basement. So they, the relatives, then I guess took a snapshot of it and sent it to, I think in this case, Sotheby's, and said like, is this valuable? And Sotheby's said, yes, please, can we sell it? And so it was sold at auction at Sotheby's in New York, and it went for something like four times their estimate because it's such an unusual and unique object and that's …

Beth Bacon: What was their estimate and what was the sales price?

Sarah Lees: Let's see. the estimate was between 50, 000 and 70, 000. And according to the New York Times, more than six times that auction price, so it sold for 456, 000 as opposed to 11, 000. So that tells you something about the value that the National Portrait Gallery and the market actually consider this daguerreotype to have, right? 

Beth Bacon Yeah, and so it was the National Portrait Gallery that bought  it. 

Sarah Lees: Yes, 

Beth Bacon: Very interesting. What a find I would have called Antiques Roadshow, right? They were smart and called Sotheby's. Wow. Wow. Can you imagine finding that in a basement? 

Sarah Lees:  I know. I know. And then realizing that it wasn't just, you know, Aunt Jane or whatever it was. yeah. And we can talk more about this kind of process of discovery because it's not all that uncommon, frankly. I was just talking to the director of the Musee d'Orsay the other day, 

Beth Bacon: The director of who? Of what? 

Sarah Lees: Of the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. 

Beth Bacon: Oh, the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. Yes. That's an amazing museum. 

Sarah Lees: Happened to be chatting, and he was talking about this photography show that they're gonna have about, a French woman photographer who also was completely unknown.So, because photography got to be so popular and so accessible, almost anyone can do it. There probably were many people who just were completely in love with this process and took tons of photographs. Right? and much of the time, their names and the names of the people who they were photographing are not. Um, but luckily, you know, we catch a few of them, and this Dolley Madison photo, I mean, right. If it had gone to like Antique Roadshow, who knows where it would have ended up. Maybe the buyer would have paid, you know, 70, 000 like the estimate was and thought, Oh, this is cool old photograph, but not known more than that, you know?

Beth Bacon: Yeah. How did Sotheby's know it was, Dolley Madison? Did they just 

know what she looked like? 

Sarah Lees: Possibly because again, there are a few other images effort, including the one at the Maine Historical Society. because, of course, the service has photo experts. And when you're talking about it, sorry, daguerreotype, knowing that they are, kind of special objects and therefore important people might be more likely to sit for their photograph. you know, I think there would be a tune to, like, trying to figure out who is it pictured in the image. So. It's not surprising to me that some random person sends them a snapshot of a photo and someone in the South Beach department is like, Oh my God, that's Dolley Madison. I think that does make sense to me. 

Beth Bacon: Yeah. You know, it just so happens a couple of weeks ago, I was in DC and went to the portrait gallery. Because that's one of my favorite. Museums. and not that I was looking for daguerreotypes particularly, but I definitely didn't see like a daguerreotype room. I'm wondering, do you have any idea, how that fits in with all the other kinds of portraits they have there? Like if, if you were the curator there, what would you do with it? 

Sarah Lees: Well, it is light sensitive, they're delicate objects, and therefore you don't want to have them on view all the time. So I think if you're going to show daguerreotypes, first of all, you wouldn't have them on view permanently, right? You would have temporary exhibitions. I've even seen in some cases, um, either there could be like a cover over the photograph itself, and if you want to look at it as a museum visitor, you have to lift the cover to see the object. I think I saw another show of these amazing photographs. I think some were daguerreotypes, some might not have been, there were pictures of Egypt and the Middle East, and I think in a few, Instances. You actually had to push a button to turn on the light to see the object. 

Beth Bacon: Because you have to have light to see it, right? You wouldn't be able to see it in a dark room. Is that correct? 

Sarah Lees: Correct. Yeah. But also you want to again, because these are light sensitive objects, you don't want them exposed to any more light than necessary. So that's why if you can keep them in the dark, either, you know, dimming the lights or putting, you know, a cover over them, Okay. And then only allowing people to look at them when they really want to, that again limits the amount of light exposure on each of these objects. 

Beth Bacon: Yeah, and I guess we're all lucky that this was, in somebody's basement, which was probably pretty dark. Maybe it was in a box, so it was in decent conditions for being preserved. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, and of course the other thing is since it is it's in a case itself So it does sort of have a cover. So thankfully a lot of dirt get it…. Yeah, I am having trouble saying it .. Duerre…It's not an easy word 

Beth Bacon: That's true.

Sarah Lees:  D-U-E-R-R. Yeah. Anyway, a lot of them are kind of, you know, automatically hit in the dark 'cause in their own little box, so that's also helpful. 

Beth Bacon So do we have any idea who owned that box back in the day of Dolley Madison's photograph? 

Sarah Lees: I do not. I would love to know more about that. I think there is some more information actually about the object at the Maine Historical Society but as is often the case when something comes up at auction, they don't have a lot of information about the previous owners, because often people want to remain anonymous. So this one just says private East Coast collection by descent of the present owners, and then it comes up for sale, 

Beth Bacon: It's interesting that one piece is in a historical society and its partner is in the portrait gallery, which is more artistically oriented. It's more of an art museum. but they're similar pieces. And so, for one, it's a historical object, and for one, it's an artwork. 

Sarah Lees: You know, in a way, the National Portrait Gallery is maybe as much about history as it is about art, in a sense, right? Because part of its goal is to have portraits of significant people or images or works that are in themselves significant. And it's not necessarily about the aesthetic value of those objects, right?

Beth Bacon: So, okay. Yeah, 

Sarah Lees: So the aguerreotype could have ended up in the National Gallery of Art just as well because they also collect photographs. so that is an interesting question as to how you literally kind of frame the object within an institution. 

Beth Bacon: As a curator, what do you think of its artistic merit? Does it hold up artistically? 

Sarah Lees: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I haven't seen it in person. The images that I can see online look stunning. Again, I mean, I love photography, to be honest, and daguerreotypes have such and aura, if you will because of all these qualities of that perfect surface, the sense of texture that you can get from these images. And they are literally an index, if you will, mark that this actual person in 1846, you know, stood in somebody's studio and essentially recorded or imprinted her own image on this piece of metal that we're now looking at. You know, it's like a direct link to that historical past. Visually, intellectually, aesthetically, for all those reasons, yeah, I think it's an amazing, amazing object.

Beth Bacon: Great. Well, I think we'll come to a close but have one more question. Do you know of anyone today that is making daguerreotypes? Or is it really just a lost art? 

Sarah Lees: Also a good question. I believe people do now. Yeah, just for the fun of it really the process it's still an engaging one. And the results of the process, right? The images themselves are still very cool. I feel certain that there are contemporary photographers that do make daguerreotypes. 

Beth Bacon: Yeah. Cause it sounds like it's complicated and probably not cheap. 

Sarah Lees: Probably true. Although again, you might not need, maybe you wouldn't need silver? See, that's a good question. The actual technique of, but the other thing is that it's such an incredible contrast to the image world that we live in now, it's just completely disembodied and images are everywhere. And anyone can take a million images, you know, with literally at their fingertips. It must feel different to make a daguerreotype now, right? Yeah. 

Beth Bacon: Looking at this daguerreotype, to put yourself in the shoes of somebody in 1846 who was looking at it, where this really was, I mean, if you think that AI is futuristic for us, this daguerreotype must have been so surreal-y, like, technically, um, spooky, really, to see the image of somebody. And it is kind of a little bit spooky the way that the image is so clear, but also like on this like floating on this glass. 

Sarah Lees: Mm hmm. You're right. Yeah, imagine holding that in your hands in 1846 and thinking, what is this? 

Beth Bacon: b\Because they would have maybe little cameos or portraits that somebody would sketch or paint or even etch into a, I don't know, whalebone or something. Photographs must have, it just must have been really maybe it wasn't even well received. Maybe people were saying, this is too much technology. Let's go back to the past. Well, like people are saying about some technologies today. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, it's an important one. But people were fascinated, I think. The French poet Charles Baudelaire actually wrote about photography, I think maybe also roughly in around 1846, 1848, saying basically, “Everyone ran to the photographer's studio to have their portrait made. Narcissus to a man,” is what he wrote. Meaning, the Greek myth, Narcissus looks at his own reflection in the river, everyone is so fascinated, seeing themselves in photographs that it was wildly popular. So, um. 

Beth Bacon: Yeah. And now here we are, we're recording this. Through Zoom, we can each see each other. We're in different parts of the country. It's not just looking at each other's faces and our own faces, but we're moving, and it's live, and it's a conversation that we're having across the miles. 

Sarah Lees: And I love your orange room, by the way. 

Beth Bacon: Oh yes, I do have an orange office. 

Sarah Lees: So it's, yeah, it's like I'm in your own, in your office with you. It's, yeah.

Beth Bacon: Yeah. So, it's really, a great object to reflect on the changes and progress of technology that we've had. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, absolutely. And what better type of object to put in a museum than something like that. 

Beth Bacon: Yes, absolutely. Okay. Well, we are going to have a few more sessions on photography. So come back and you'll hear about other photographers.

Sarah Lees: Awesome. All right. See you then.  Thanks for joining us on this episode of why they put that in a museum.

Beth Bacon: We hope we've given you a fresh perspective. Sometimes if you learn a little more about an object, its whole meaning can change.

Sarah Lees: And if you enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to subscribe, rate, and leave us a review. 

Beth Bacon Tell your friends about Why'd They Put That In A Museum. We love getting feedback and if you send us a question, you might inspire us to feature that on a future episode.

Sarah Lees: Yep, definitely, if you're ever in a museum and find yourself asking these questions, just, uh, drop us a note and maybe we can discuss that very object.  

Beth Bacon: Okay. Bye-bye.