| Meade Brothers Studio Meade Brothers frontispiece for albums 1862 (ca) Carte de visite National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Dudley Emerson Lyons, Object number: AD/NPG.85.6 LL/97496 Exhibition Label
A patent for the first American photograph album was issued in May 1861, and manufacturers soon introduced a variety of albums designed to house the immensely popular cartes de visite. Intended to serve as a frontispiece to the Meade Brothers’ albums, this photograph reproduces one of Charles’s famous daguerreotypes of Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, as well as Henry’s views of Daguerre’s chateau and tomb. It also features portraits of the brothers, their father Henry, and their sister Mary Ann.
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