Portrait Gallery of Distinguished American Citizens

Hartford: E.B. and E.C. Kellogg, 1845. First edition. Twenty-seven lithographed silhouette portrait plates and twenty-seven lithographed facsimiles of the subject's handwriting. 111pp. Folio. Publisher's black morocco backed cloth boards, upper cover pictorially stamped in gilt, worn at board edges. Foxing. First edition. Twenty-seven lithographed silhouette portrait plates and twenty-seven lithographed facsimiles of the subject's handwriting. 111pp. Folio. This impressively large scale work is notable for its lithographs of renowned Americans of the 1820s, '30s and '40s, showing the subjects standing in full-length silhouette profile, against a tinted background, resulting in effective and evocative portraits. The silhouettes were originally executed with scissors, based on sketches made from life by Brown (with the exception of Washington), who was widely celebrated for his scissor portraits.

Included, after the eulogistic frontispiece dedicated to Washington, are John Marshall, John Quincy Adams, Richard C. Moore, Andrew Jackson, John Forsyth, William Henry Harrison, John C. Calhoun, De Witt Clinton, Richard M. Johnson, Joel Poinsett, Alexander Macomb, Martin Van Buren, Samuel Southard, Henry Clay, Henry Wise, Thomas Hart Benton, John Tyler, Levi Woodbury, Thomas Cooper, Daniel Webster, William White, Silas Wright, Nathaniel Tallmadge, Felix Grundy, Dixon Lewis, and John Randolph. Each portrait is accompanied by another plate displaying a facsimile of the subject's handwriting, usually in a piece of correspondence. Howes B871, "b.