Cabinet Card Portrait of Ednah Dow Littlehale Cheney.
Boston, Massachusetts: “Boston and Cambridgeport, Mass.” imprint on verso, N.d. Albumen photograph on mount measuring 4 ¼ x 6 ½ inches. Contemporary pencil identification on verso reading “Mrs E D Cheney.”. Excellent tonal clarity. Excellent. Item #List36101
Oval bust portrait in profile, Cheney facing left, hair parted and drawn into a low chignon; wearing a dark dress with decorative buttons and a white lace collar. Born in Boston in 1824, Cheney was closely associated with the Transcendentalist and reform circles of mid-nineteenth century New England. As a young woman she attended Margaret Fuller’s conversation classes and moved within the intellectual orbit of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker, Bronson Alcott, and other Unitarian and reform leaders. A committed abolitionist, she supported antislavery efforts before the Civil War and, during the war, worked with Freedmen’s aid organizations, promoting education for formerly enslaved people and assisting Black regiments.
Cheney was instrumental in advancing women’s professional education in Boston, helping to found the Boston School of Design for Women and supporting the New England Hospital for Women and Children (associated with the Woman’s Medical College of Boston). She served as president of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association in 1879 and remained active in organized suffrage work thereafter. A prolific author, she published works on religion, education, and reform, including Life of Louisa M. Alcott (1889), reflecting her long friendship with the Alcott family.
A Boston studio portrait of a central figure in nineteenth-century abolitionist, educational, and suffrage networks. We find no other examples of portraits of Cheney at the time of writing, and the last auction record in 2004.
Price: $500.00