Jules Lion
1840s (late)
A young African American woman

Daguerreotype, 1/9 plate
Internet - Original source ill-defined
Auction: 26 Feb 2021, USA, Cincinnati, OH, Lot: 60
 
Ninth plate daguerreotype portrait of lovely young African American woman wearing dress adorned with an ornate white collar. (Light surface wiping, minor spotting.) Housed in full pressed paper case (fully separated at spine, with some surface wear including finish loss). Attributed to Jules Lion.
 
Paris native and artist Jules Lion moved to New Orleans in the mid-1930s as a "free man of color," inferred from the initials "fmc" printed next to his name in a New Orleans city directory. Upon Louis Daguerre's invention of the daguerreotype process, Lion travelled back to Paris to learn from one of Daguerre's partners before returning to New Orleans to open his own studio. The St. Charles Museum exhibited a collection of Lion's daguerreotypes in 1840, as reported in the New Orleans Bee. Lion returned mostly to non-photographic arts after a short time, however, including his prized lithograph portraits of legendary Louisiana figures. The daguerreotype portrait featured here is said to feature a member of the Lion family and to have been created after Lion had largely turned to lithography and teaching, in the late 1840s.
 
Illustrated in Photography in New Orleans, p. 48. Displayed at the Sankofa Travelling Exhibit at Louisiana State Museum, which has locations across the state.
 
Consignor relates that this image was acquired by his father, a long-time collector, directly from the family of Jules Lion in Louisiana, ca mid 20th century.
 
LL/127492