What is the earliest photo of a famous person?
My submission: the Duke of Wellington, born 1769, defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, twice British prime minister (1828 to 1830, 1834), died 1852.
Daguerreotype of him from 1844:
Victoria, but not clear if it was taken in 1844 or 1845.
Not seen that one before.
John Quincy Adams, 6th President of the United States, was born on 11 July 1767, so a couple of years before Wellington.
Copy of portrait daguerreotype. Original - between circa 1843 and circa 1848; Copy - between circa 1855 and circa 1865
Franz Liszt from 1843
Extremely tight spread on the photo dates here - a true neck and neck race.
Louis Daguerre invented his process in 1839 so you would expect there must be one of himself from soon after, but the earliest I could find was 1844.
If notorious counts as famous then the French police were ahead of the pack:
NOVEL APPLICATION OF THE DAGUERREOTYPE.—The French police have availed themselves of the expedition and accuracy of this mode of taking likenesses.
As soon as a great or notorious criminal falls into their hands, they take his likeness by means of the Daguerreotype, and send copies of it to the several agents of police, so that, if he should escape from one charge, he may if accused of another, in a different part of France be easily recognised as an old offender. M. Daguerre never contemplated such, an application of his “type.” (South Australian Examiner 7 July 1842: 3)
Prince Albert had been photographed in 1842.
William Constable (1783-1861) - Prince Albert (1819-1861) (rct.uk)
Apparently there was a photograph taken of William Henry Harrison in 1841, but it’s been lost
For clarification—is John Quincy Adams the first President there is a “photograph” of?
This page presents presidential photographic firsts. Quincy is the first person to have been president, but Polk was the first sitting president.
The Smithsonian states directly that the Quincy photo was taken in 1843, but credits it to Philip Hass, a different name than given in my link.
There’s a slightly older one.
You Can Buy the Oldest Surviving Photo of a U.S. President | Mental Floss
That’s the one by Hass I referred to. I hadn’t realized they were two different 1843 photos.
Also, the Metropolitan Museum owns a copy of the 1841 Harrison lost photo from 1850.
Would being the first person ever photographed make someone famous?
I don’t think so. I believe the first people who were photographed were a man getting his shoes shined by another.
See @Qmatic’s post above.
In a tipical twist of coincidence, I read today in another page I like to peruse about the first photograph of people having a beer:
They were not famous, though. Still a coincidence I liked.
So it looks like the oldest existing photo of a famous person might be the Prince Albert one from 1842. Prince Albert had married Queen Victoria, who ascended the throne in 1837, a couple of years previously, which would have made him pretty famous at the time of being photographed.
The 1839 self-portrait by Robert Cornelius might be the earliest photo of a notable person, someone with a Wikipedia page. Cornelius looks to have been a successful photographer and businessman, although I’m not sure he’d qualify as famous in his time. There are some interesting photos of his on his Wikipedia page from the 1839-42 period.
President John Quincy Adams, born in 1767, might be the earliest-born famous person ever photographed.
I think that the Duke of Wellington might be the person who became famous the earliest in time out of the famous people that have been photographed. It seems difficult to pin down exactly when he could be considered to have become famous, but he seems to have been so by the time he was made Duke of Wellington in 1814, following his victories against Napoleon’s forces in the Peninsular War.
John Quincy Adams was born a couple of years before Wellington, but I’m not sure how much his diplomatic and ambassadorial work during the same time frame as Wellington’s military successes would have brought him wider fame, before he became Secretary of State in 1817 and President in 1825.
Maria Edgeworth beats all those on almost all counts. She was photographed in 1841. Her visit to the photographer is documented. She was also at that time properly famous and had been so since the first decade of the century. She was only slightly younger than Adams.
NPG P5; Maria Edgeworth - Portrait - National Portrait Gallery
I’d not ever heard of her, but then, I also never studied literature. Based on this article from the Irish Times, it does sound like she was a very successful writer, though by the time of that photograph, her fame had dimmed.