William Henry Harrison Cool Art James K Polk Art

When Whig opponents chanted "Who is James One thousand. Polk?" throughout the presidential ballot of 1844, information technology was more an endeavor to influence perception than a reflection of reality. The image of Polk every bit an obscure protege of Andrew Jackson stood in contrast to the successful career of the nationally known governor of Tennessee and speaker of the The states House of Representatives. Polk's "nighttime equus caballus" status was based not on his political obscurity, but on his unexpected option past the Demo­cratic party. In May 1844 the Democrats met in Baltimore, faced with the task of finding a candidate to oppose the ever-popular Henry Clay of Kentucky. Former president Martin Van Buren was initially the Autonomous front runner, just neither Van Buren or his closest rivals, Lewis Cass, Richard Thou. Johnson, and James Buchanan, could garner enough support to secure the necessary two-thirds vote. The prospective candidates were locked in and labeled by their political ideologies, and compromise was slow in coming. Surprisingly, on the eighth ballot the intended vice presidential candidate, James K. Polk, was considered for the start role and received a single delegate's vote. On the ninth ballot the incredible occurred. The delegates overwhelmingly threw their support behind the immature Tennessee statesman. Polk had emerged from behind the pack of role seekers to become the showtime dark horse presidential candidate selected past a major party.

James Knox Polk, born into modest circumstances on Novem­ber 2, 1795, on the family subcontract in Mecklenburg Canton, Northward Carolina, was named afterward his maternal grandfather, a captain of militia during the American Revolution. After service in the Tennessee legislature he was elected to the United States House of Representatives and reelected six times in succession. As a true-blue supporter of President Andrew Jackson he was rewarded with the chairmanship of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, and in 1835 was elected Speaker. At the opening of the presidential entrada of 1844 it was generally believed that Henry Clay would resoundingly defeat the compromise Demo­cratic candidate. Dirt's opposition to the annexation of Texas, nevertheless, undermined his back up in the South, while Polk's pop­ity grew from his position for immediate annexation, settlement of the Oregon boundary dispute, and the reduction of the tariff. In the November full general ballot Polk captured fifty percent of the pop vote and 170 electoral ballots to get, at age twoscore- 9, the youngest president up to that fourth dimension. Described as a hard worker and a conscientious administrator, Polk held a clear vision for his presidency. In keeping with the style established by his mentor Andrew Jackson, Polk would dominate his cabinet, thereby increasing the powers of his office. High on the president's calendar was the acquisition of western lands. As the architect of Manifest Destiny, Polk would double the territorial size of the United States through the annex­ation of Texas and the acquisition of California.

A portrait of James K. Polk attributed to Matthew Brady at the White Business firm, Feb 1849. When Brady copied this portrait of President Polk and offered it commercially every bit a bill of fare de visite - a visiting-card-sized photograph - the paradigm was retouched to make the presidents appearance somewhat softer.

Library of Congress

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Fifty-fifty before James Polk took the oath of function on March four, 1845, he was pursued past photographers. The science and art of the daguerreotype, the earliest course of photography, had ad­vanced significantly since its introduction in French republic in 1839. In its primitive stages the daguerreo­blazon, a silvered plate of copper rendered light-sensitive by expo­sure to iodine fumes, was photo­graphically as well dull for applied portraiture. Within a year of the announced discovery, however, inquisitive minds in all comers of the globe had devised improve­ments in chemical science and optics, enabling the establishment of photographic portrait galleries. Daguerreotypes were produced in smashing numbers in France and elsewhere in Europe. Information technology was in America, however, that photogra­phy took on the proportions of a major industry. Ane of the earliest practitioners of the new scientific discipline was a remarkable, energetic visionary named John Plumbe, Jr., who styled himself professor of photography.

During the first 6 years of the daguerreian era Plumbe had attained a national reputation by winning the highest honors in photographic competitions and past establishing a chain of xx-five galleries extending up and downwardly the east coast, west to the Missis­sippi, and downwards to New Orleans.^one In improver to manufacturing and importing all requisite photo­graphic materials, Professor Plumbe gave instructions to the first generation of photographers in America. Plumbe photographed the humble and the mighty but had a particular interest in portraits of celebrities, who frequented his many fine establishments. The immature reporter Walt Whitman once wrote a paper account of his visit to Plumbe's elegant Broadway gallery in New York. He noted that the richly appointed walls were covered with the likenesses of distinguished statesmen, authors, musicians, actors and comedians, jurists, artists, and belles.ⁱⁱ

Belatedly in 1844 John Plumbe opened his new gallery in Washington, D.C., in the Concert Hall building adjacent to the stylish Brown'due south Hotel on Pennsylvania Artery.³ Ever seeking the car­riage trade, Plumbe located his daguerreotype studio halfway between the Capitol and the President's House. It was probably non past accident that his inflow in Washington coincided with that of President-elect Polk. A contempo­rary paper account gives evidence of Plumbe'due south success:

"PLUMB'S [sic] DAGUERREAN GALLERY.

Mr. Editor: I had heard so much of late almost the meliorate­ments of Professor Plumb [sic] in Daguerreotyping, that my marvel led me to visit his specimen gallery; and the first object that attracted my attending was a likeness of the President elect, taken a few days agone. It is ane of the finest specimens of this art that I ever beheld; and the Professor informed me that he was making preparations to take the likenesses of President Polk'due south Cabinet, and then soon every bit they shall be announced to the land; which fact volition elicit the attention of the vast concourse of his friends who will be present at the Inauguration. I say to those, who are fond of the fine arts, that the Professor's specimens are well worthy of their attention; and should they visit his Gallery they will be met in a gentlemanly and courteous manner.

An gentleman of the fine arts." ^iv

Polk was non the outset presi­paring to accept his photograph taken while in office. Sometime between March four and half-dozen, 1841, President William Henry Harrison saturday for his daguerreotype likeness in the U.S. Capitol.

As early as February 1845, Plumbe was planning to photo­graph the new president with his chiffonier. Evidently Plumbe was not the only one anxious for the president-elect to choose his advisors. The chiffonier selection was one of Polk's well-nigh vexing problems. It would have the methodical Polk three and a one-half months to select his six depart­ment heads. The problem of sectionalism, with the underlying and ever-nowadays consequence of slavery, gave Polk expert reason to seek a counterbalanced representation in his cabinet. Inside x days of the inauguration, Plumbe offered for auction a portrait of the newly in­ stalled master executive. An adver­tisement in The Daily Madisonian offered "beautiful gold breast pins, containing likenesses of President Polk, furnished to order."^v Unfortunately, neither the daguerreotype of the president-elect displayed in Plumbe'southward Washington gallery or an case of the Polk breast pin accept been located.

Polk was non the starting time presi­dent to take his photograph taken while in office. That honor goes back almost to the first of photography itself. Sometime between March 4 and vi, 1841, President William Henry Harrison sat for his daguerreotype likeness in the U.South. Capitol. A paper announcement suggests that the paradigm could have been taken on Harrison's fateful inauguration day. Afoot photographers Moore and Ward prevailed upon Vice President Richard Grand. Johnson to provide the use of his official apartment and access to rooms of the Senate Commission on Armed forces Affairs. Co-ordinate to the photographer Moore, President Harrison was "delighted with the results." In a month's time Harrison would be dead from pneumonia contracted during his lengthy inaugural address. This likeness of the imperceptible Presi­dent Harrison has never been found.⁶

Early in 1846 Plumbe trav­eled downwards Pennsylvania Avenue to visit the President's Firm. This time his intent was not to obtain another presidential portrait only to record an architectural view of the executive mansion. According to a paper study, information technology was Plumbe's idea to photo the public buildings and monuments of Washington and to exhibit them free to the public in his gallery. Further, Plumbe intended "to dispose of copies of these beauti­ful pictures, either in sets or singly."⁷ Plumbe's daguerreotype of President and Mrs. James K. Polk'south official residence is the earliest known photograph of the White House. This photo­graph, together with views of the Capitol, Patent Office, and Post Office, was discovered in Califor­nia in 1973 and is at present in the collection of the Library of Congress.^viii

South view of the President's House looking north and east: primeval known photo of the White House, c. Jan 1846, President Polk's first year in part.

Library of Congress

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On Feb 27, 1846, after slightly less than a twelvemonth in role, President Polk dutifully recorded in his diary the occasion of his daguerreotype portrait:

"At the request of Mr. Shank of Cincinnati, Ohio, who was taking Daguerreotype [Vc] likenesses of the ladies of the family in one of the parlours below stairs requested to have mine for his own use, and I gave him a sitting. He took several expert likenesses"⁹

Abel Shank was a camera­ man employed by John Plumbe. Early on in the aforementioned yr, he photo­graphed former president John Quincy Adams at the Pennsylva­nia Avenue gallery.¹⁰ It is uncer­tain which likeness of President Polk was Shank'southward, but in 1846 Nathaniel Currier published a pair of lithographic portraits of the president and kickoff lady from daguerreotypes by Plumbe. Information technology was a policy of the Plumbe Gallery that all of the daguerreo­types issued from its many locations (regardless of the photographer) were identified every bit works by PLUMBE. Plumbe pioneered the concept of brand proper noun recognition in photography. Mathew Brady would re-create the idea to great reward 10 years later. The significance of the Shank portrait of President Polk is considerable. Although we cannot with certainty place the image, information technology is the earliest recorded case of a photograph of a United States president taken in the White House. All previous images were taken either in the Capitol or in a photographer's studio. The fact that a photographer was admitted into his family's quarters shows the degree of accessibility Presi­paring Polk allowed.

Mr. Healey [sic], the artist, requested the cabinet & myself to go into the parlour and suffer him to take a dagguerryotype [sic] likeness of the whole of us in a group. We gratified him.

With the annexation of Texas, Mexican-American relations were doomed. On May 13, 1846, Congress declared state of war with Mexico as a upshot of an engage­ment in a disputed region. Despite the many concerns of the war, President Polk agreed to accom­modate the portrait painter George Peter Alexander Healy's request for a likeness. Later taxing the president with more than thirteen hours of sittings, Healy fabricated a concluding request for a daguerreotype session. In his diary entry of June 16, 1846, President Polk recorded,

"Mr. Healey [sic], the artist, requested the cabinet & myself to go into the parlour and suffer him to take a dagguerryotype [sic] likeness of the whole of u.s.a. in a group. We gratified him. We constitute Mrs. Madison in the parlour with the ladies. Iii attempts were fabricated to accept the likeness of myself, the Chiffonier, & the ladies in a grouping, all of which failed."^xi

Although the president made note of the failed attempts to accept grouping portraits inside the dimly lit White House, an existing da­guerreotype may correspond the successful piece of work of the artist-tumed-lensman George Healy. In the drove of the International Museum of Photog­raphy at the George Eastman House is an extraordinary da­guerreotype portraying President and Mrs. Polk accompanied by former First Lady Dolley Madison and the secretary of country and future president James Buchanan, with his niece the future White Business firm hostess, Harriet Lane. The electric current first family is literally flanked by administrations past and future. Two prominent members of Polk's chiffonier are also part of the sunlit assembly: Cave Johnson, the postmaster full general, best remembered for his introduc­tion of the U.S. stamp postage, and Secretary of the Treasury Robert Walker, the guiding force behind the Independent Treasury Organisation. A windowed wall of the southward portico of the White House serves as a backdrop for this informal and historically significant portrait.

A gathering on the South Portico of the White House, almost 1848. That near mod couple, James and Sarah Polk, are front center. The turbaned head to the president's left is that of the by-then-legendary Dolley Madison.

George Eastman House

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John Plumbe's desire to photograph President Polk and his chiffonier was finally fulfilled in the spring or summertime of 1846.¹² By that time Polk had assumed the role of commander in master of all U.Due south. military forces and was conducting a distant war. Though obviously preoccupied with matters of national conse­quence, the president and his advisors assembled in the Country Dining Room—Thomas Jefferson's old office—to pose for Professor Plumbe. All were present save one, the secre­tary of state, James Buchanan. Seated in the front row at far left was the relaxed and engaging attorney general, John Y. Mason, a Virginian who served as navy secretarial assistant in John Tyler's adminis­tration. He would play an impor­tant role in concluding the Mexi­tin War and be appointed to the Supreme Court past President Buchanan. Next to him sat the busy secretarial assistant of state of war, William L. Marcy from New York. His offhanded remark, "to the victors belong the spoils," forever links his name with the patronage system. The president, somber and intense, placed his hand across his breast, recalling a pose more familiar to the previous century. The president, slightly less than medium height, maintained a trim figure. His eyes were large and deep set, some said piercing on occasion. A stupor of black hair, turned gray by the time he took office, he wore long and combed straight dorsum, at times spilling over his collar. Seated at far correct was Secretary of the Treasury Robert J. Walker from Mississippi. Author of the Walker Tariff of 1846, he provided skilful counsel for the president and raised individual funds to back up the war with Mexico. The towering figure at middle was Cave Johnson, a fellow Tennessean, longtime political marry and personal friend of the presi­dent. Johnson would serve equally postmaster general throughout Polk's administration. Standing off to the side, perhaps in an uncon­scious endeavour to distance himself from the other bureaucrats, was Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft of Massachusetts, the preeminent American historian of his day and founder of the U.South. Naval University. Bancroft would commodities from Polk'southward chiffonier in Sep­tember over the morality of the Mexican War. For his loyal service Polk would appoint him U.Southward. minister to United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland.

The Plumbe daguerreotype of President Polk and cabinet holds dual historical distinctions. It is the primeval known photograph of a U.S. president with his advisors, besides as the first photographic record of a White House interior. Architectural historian William Seale observes:

"[The photo] shows white- painted woodwork, which was customary throughout the house, and a highly figured, though not strongly contrasting wallpaper. The State Dining Room chairs appear in the Chiffonier photograph. These were in the mode popularly known as "French antique" or Louis Quatorze. Ane of Monroe's marble mantels from Italia crosses the dorsum of the moving picture, and at that place are impressions of a basketlike chandelier fabricated of glass beads reflected in the huge mirror that hangs over it. A faint pattern is discernible in the wallpaper. The carpet is decorated with flowers."¹³

President Polk and his chiffonier assembled in the State Dining Room. An image of dual historical significance: the earliest photographic tape of a White House interior and the commencement photo of a U.S. President and his advisors.

James Yard. Polk Memorial

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The demands of office during the state of war with Mexico appear to take restricted President Polk's time. Constantly besieged by office seekers and immersed in the details of his administration, Polk curtailed appointments with portraitists. It was non until January 12, 1848, two weeks earlier the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in Mexico signified an end to hostilities, that Polk agreed to sit for some other daguerreotype. John Plumbe one time more than arrived at the President's House and set up upwardly his photographic equipment in the State Dining Room, where he took Polk'due south portrait.^fourteen No specific likeness can be attributed to that sitting, merely the dramatic half-length, semiprofile daguerreotype portrait of James and Sarah Childress Polk, pres­ently endemic by the James K. Polk Dwelling in Columbia, Tennessee, bears many of the familiar hall­ marks of Plumbe'southward work.¹⁵ The image was given to the museum by a descendant of Mrs. Polk, though its history has long been obscured. In 1910 the image was reproduced equally a frontispiece for book 3 of The Diary of James K. Polk with a annotation that information technology was taken in Washington in 1847 or 1848.¹⁶

A year after Plumbe'due south visit to the executive mansion, Mathew Brady of New York arranged for several sittings with President Polk. Realizing that the self- proclaimed ane-term president was virtually to leave office, Brady hastened to photograph the pop statesman. On Feb 14, 1849, Brady secured permis­sion to convert the Country Dining Room into a temporary photo­ graphic studio.¹⁷ 2 days later Brady returned, this time to record the president and cabinet members James Buchanan and John Y. Mason.¹⁸ Encouraged by his rapport with the president, Brady called the very next mean solar day for another session. President Polk detailed the event in his diary entry for February 17, 1849:

"The Cabinet met at the usual hour; all of the members present except the Secretary of War ... in consequence of indisposition. Before entering on whatever business the members of the Cabinet at my request accompanied me to the large dining room below stairs & set for their Daguerrotype [sic] likenesses. Mr. Brady, the artist, desired to take the Cabinet & myself in a group and did so."^nineteen

A single daguerreotype portrait of President Polk attrib­uted to the sittings of Feb 1849 has survived. This handsome, half-length portrait of the resolute president is now in the Mathew Brady Collection at the Library of Congress. In the early 1860s Brady copied the daguerreotype onto a glass plate negative and sold carte de visite photographic prints of the former president. More recently, a vignette version of the Brady portrait was depicted on a The states thirty-2 cent stamp to commemorate Polk'south 200th birthday.

President and Mrs. James K. Polk, one of the youngest and almost handsome couples to enter the White Firm.

James K. Polk Ancestral Home Collection

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President Polk was succeeded by the victorious Mexican War general Zachary Taylor. Polk regarded his succes­sor, thrust into function by the Whigs, as "wholly unqualified for the station," existence "without political information and without experience in civil life.²⁰ "None­theless, on inauguration twenty-four hours, Monday, March 5, 1849, Polk took the new president by the hand and expressed his desire that the land would prosper under Taylor's leadership. To com­memorate the transfer of ability, Brother Jonathan, a popular periodical of the solar day, carried an aggressive woodcut illustration of the event. The fanciful composite shows President Taylor surrounded by a oversupply of well- wishers, including Millard Fillmore, John Tyler, Daniel Webster, John Calhoun, Sam Flouston, two Indian chiefs, and several Supreme Courtroom justices. A note of explanation accompanies the engraving:

"President Taylor Delivering His Countdown Speech communication, on the Steps of the Capitol. With Portraits past Matteson, of some of the Virtually Distinguished Statesmen, Soldiers, Citizens and Ladies At present at the Seat of Authorities. These portraits, be it remembered, are perfect likenesses of the distin­guished individuals they repre­sent; for they are exact facsimile of daguerreotypes taken from life by the great artist Plumbe; and this is an assurance for their fidelity, which places them across question or cavil."²¹

Standing behind President Taylor on the countdown platform are old President and Mrs. James Chiliad. Polk. Their portrait is a primitive rendering from a lovely daguerreotype. The pose is reminiscent of an earlier White House portrait taken by Plumbe. With this published portrait the circumvolve was completed; John Plumbe had photographed Polk as president-elect, several times at the White House during his most turbulent days in role, and now the last image of Polk every bit he prepared to get out Washington for retirement. On the day he left the White Business firm Polk confided in his diary, "I feel exceedingly relieved that I am at present free from all public cares."²² The former president returned to Nashville, so went on a triumphant tour of the Southward, where he fell sick and died, possibly from cholera, less than iv months after leaving office.

James 1000. Polk has been appraised as the greatest one-term president. His pursuit of Manifest Destiny and his adherence to fiscal responsibility expanded and strengthened the commonwealth. During his term several of import techno­logical developments helped shape the futurity of the nation—the expansion of the interstate railroad organisation, the invention and utiliza­tion of the magnetic telegraph, and the universal application of photography. President Polk was the first chief executive to be photographed repeatedly. His willingness to accommodate photographers, fifty-fifty into the White Business firm, speaks of his sense of historical sensation. Through the perseverance and artistry of pioneer photographers John Plumbe, George Healy, Mathew Brady, and others, a vivid and personal record of the illustrious "dark equus caballus" has been preserved for time to come generations.

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Source: https://www.whitehousehistory.org/a-dark-horse-in-sunlight-and-shadow

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