Meserve Collection Highlights: Modern Prints from Mathew Brady’s Portrait Negatives

Meserve Collection Highlights: Modern Prints from Mathew Brady’s Portrait Negatives explores Mathew Brady’s career as a portrait photographer, before and during the Civil War era. The exhibition presents nine modern prints made from Brady’s original photographic negatives, including portraits of Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ulysses S. Grant, and Emma, Queen of Hawai‘i.

The exhibition also places Brady’s work in the context of the 19th-century photographic portrait market. His studios produced thousands of glass-plate negatives, including images used for small, card-mounted photographs known as cartes de visite, which helped make photographic portraits widely available in the United States after their introduction in 1859. On view are an original glass-plate negative and one of Brady’s wooden storage boxes, drawn from the more than 5,400 Brady studio negatives acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in 1981 from the Frederick Hill Meserve Collection.

When: May 23, 2025–May 14, 2028

Venue: National Portrait Gallery, First Floor, East Galleries

Featured subjects: Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ulysses S. Grant, and Emma, Queen of Hawai‘i

On view: Nine modern prints made from Mathew Brady’s original photographic negatives, an original glass-plate negative, and one of Brady’s wooden storage boxes

Background: The negatives were created by Brady’s studios and later assembled in the Frederick Hill Meserve Collection. The National Portrait Gallery acquired more than 5,400 Brady studio negatives in 1981.

Tickets: Price not available