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[Rochester, New York; and possibly Cincinnati, 1882.] Original albumen print, 8.875” x 6.25” on slightly larger paperboard mount with gilt beveled edges. Early presentation inscription on verso in the hand of Consuelo Clark reading: “To: Dr. E. Y Howard,” i.e., Elmira Young Howard. CONDITION: Good, light foxing, some fading, expert repair to lower left corner of mount.

A rare and impressively large photograph of Frederick Douglass, inscribed by Dr. Consuelo Clark (1860–1910), one of the earliest African American woman physicians, and the first to practice in Ohio, to Dr. Elmira Y. Howard (1842–1921), the first woman physician West of the Allegheny Mountains, who mentored Consuleo Clark when she was a youth and subsequently operated a practice with her in Cincinnati.

Clark’s brother was Herbert A. Clark (1858–1921), an excellent amateur photographer, the editor of the Afro-American in St. Joseph, Louisiana, and subsequently Principal of the Frederick Douglass School in Columbia, Missouri. Consuelo and Herbert Clark’s father, Peter H. Clark (1829–1925), worked with Frederick Douglass on The North Star, is thought to have been extensively involved in the Underground Railroad in Cincinnati, was a significant figure in the 1858 Cincinnati Colored Convention, became the first teacher of Colored Public Schools in Cincinnati, and argued continually for Civil Rights. Elmira Howard was one of the first students to enroll in Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell’s medical school for women in New York and subsequently lived just two doors away from the home of Peter Clark and his family on Barr Street in Cincinnati. It was during this time that she began mentoring Consuelo, who later attended the Boston University School of Medicine, then returned to Cincinnati to practice.

John Howe Kent’s photograph of Douglass served as the basis for the frontispieces of Douglass’s Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892) and an 1899 Douglass biography by Charles W. Chesnutt. According to Picturing Frederick Douglass, a note accompanying the engraving in Chesnutt’s biography states that Kent’s was the photo “most highly thought of by [the Douglass] family.” The present example of this photograph, apparently enlarged from the Kent cabinet card and lacking a photo credit, seems likely to have been the work of Herbert Clark. It is among the largest photographic portraits of Douglass to survive. It was preserved in a Howard family archive by descent to Howard’s great-granddaughter Virginia Burdine (d. 2018). The archive was sold at Sparks Auction Service, Edina, Missouri in 2020, and the photograph subsequently came to us through the trade. 

For purposes of comparison with the inscription on the verso of the photograph, we have included in this listing an image of an envelope from the Howard archive addressed in Consuelo Clark’s hand to Howard. 

A marvelous large-format photograph of Frederick Douglass, with a richly evocative provenance.

REFERENCES: Picturing Frederick Douglass, No. 111; “Consuelo Clark” at Colored Conventions Project online; Sutton, Geoff. “Elmira Young Howard: ‘Doctress’ with an MD from a Women’s Medical College” at Walnut Hills Historical Society online; Hertz, Walter. “Clark, Peter” at Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography online.

Item #10193

Price: $12,500.00