Carte-de-Viste Portrait of Harriet Beecher Stowe, c. 1870.
New York: Howell, c. 1870. Carte de viste portrait on larger mount, with printed studio imprint “Howell, 807 & 869 B’way” on mount. 2 ½ x 4 inches. Excellent condition and contrast. Item #List36102
Three-quarter bust portrait of Stowe, facing slightly left, wearing a dark dress with ruffled trim and a cameo brooch at the collar; her hair arranged in tight ringlets framing the face, one of at least two poses from this sitting that were published. The Broadway address dates Howell’s New York studio operation to the post–Civil War period. Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), published more than thirty books including Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856), The Minister’s Wooing (1859), and Oldtown Folks (1869). Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold an estimated 300,000 copies in its first year in the United States and was widely credited with intensifying sectional debate over slavery in the decade preceding the Civil War. Stowe lectured extensively in the United States and Britain in the 1850s and remained a public literary and reform figure into the Reconstruction era; cartes de visite such as this one were often sold as keepsakes for touring lecturers. Stowe’s likeness was reproduced by multiple studios during and after the height of her fame. A strong New York imprint of one of the most widely recognized American women of the nineteenth century.
Price: $850.00