Prints from Photographs, Part 1 of 2

After reports of Robert E. Lee’s exploits during the Mexican War in 1846 began to appear in newspapers, his name became more and more familiar to the reading public. His renown increased even more in 1859 when he led U.S. Marines who captured John Brown during his attempted slave insurrection at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Editors and publishers noting Lee’s rising prominence in military matters, began to seek representative images of him for their readers, and over the next few years woodcuts and steel engravings began to appear in print in both the North and the South.

During the early 1800s, printmakers and engravers primarily based their work on paintings, drawings, or other artistic renderings, but after 1850, they increasingly based their work on photographs of their subject. Engravings of Lee that appeared in print in the U.S. during this time were no different.

The artist preparing an engraving usually “improved” or “enhanced” the original photographic presentation, sometimes extensively. Therefore, knowing when the engraved interpretation of a particular photograph was first published establishes for certain that the original photograph upon which it was based was made prior to that date.

Steel engraving by A. H. Ritchie based on “West Point” photograph. Published as a photograph in 1861.

An interesting woodcut engraving based on a fanciful steel engraving by A. H. Ritchie was published in the North in August 1861.  According to the publisher this woodcut engraving was derived from a photograph by Mathew Brady.

The Rebel General Lee, woodcut based on photograph by Mathew Brady, in Harper’s Weekly, August 24, 1861.