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[DOUGLASS, FREDRICK.] Kent, John Howe, photog.

[Cabinet card photograph of Frederick Douglass.]

Rochester, New York, [1882]. Silver bromide print, 5.75” x 3.875” on larger paperboard mount, photographer’s blind-stamp on mount below image, printed photographer’s stamp on verso. CONDITION: Good, photo chipped at upper left edge, but no effect on image, some spotting and soiling.

The earliest and best-known of three photographs of Douglass taken by Rochester photographer John Howe Kent, likely dating from Douglass’s November 3rd, 1882 visit to the city to lecture at Washington Hall, which was near Kent’s studio.

This photograph 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.”

John Howe Kent operated a photo studio in Rochester from 1870 to the 1890s, also serving as vice president of the Eastman Kodak Company and president of the Photographer’s Association of America.

REFERENCES: Picturing Frederick Douglass, pp. 46, 62, plate 49 (cat. #107).

Item #10494

Price: $7,500.00

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