Exhibition Label (Accessed: 16 February 2018)
A self-taught artist, Josiah Hawes earned his living as an itinerant painter of portrait miniatures and other works before abandoning painting in favor of daguerreotypy in 1841. Two years later he joined A. Southworth & Co., the Boston daguerreian studio that would soon be known as Southworth & Hawes. Hawes shared the camera duties with Albert Southworth, but when his colleague took leave in 1849 to mine for gold in California, Hawes kept their studio running and maintained the high quality that patrons had come to expect. Southworth returned to Boston in 1851, and the two men continued to work together until they dissolved their partnership in 1862. Hawes spent the remainder of his life in photography, working in the same studio that he and Southworth had shared. He was in his eighties when he posed for this portrait with his wife, Nancy, and their children.
