Prosper M. Wetmore (1857): Art, History and Details

Prosper M. Wetmore (1857) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Mathew Brady (American, 1823–1896).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

A popular author, legislator, and general in the New York State militia, Wetmore, here at age 59, still resembles Edgar Allen Poe’s description of him from a decade earlier: “about five feet eight in height, slender, neat; with an air of military compactness.” Brady’s portrait studio, with branches in New York and Washington, DC, was the most important of its era in America, thanks in part to its success in photographing political, social, and cultural figures. These early celebrity portraits, such as those of the wedding of performer Tom Thumb (seen in the center of the gallery), could sell thousands of copies. Brady is now best known for images of the Civil War, most taken by photographers he hired.

Object facts

• Title: Prosper M. Wetmore
• Date: 1857
• Creator attribution: Mathew Brady (American, 1823–1896)
• Culture: America
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: salted paper print from wet collodion negative
• Dimensions: Image: 47 x 39.4 cm (18 1/2 x 15 1/2 in.); Matted: 66 x 55.9 cm (26 x 22 in.)
• Collection: PH - American 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1987.220

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. "The Year in Review for 1987." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 75, no. 2 (1988): 30-71.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.