[Whitman, Walt] — George C. Cox

Photographi𒉰c portrait🐟 of Walt Whitman, New York, 1887

Photographic print (225 x 186 mm) on cardboard mount (355 x 280 mm), signed ("Walt Whitman | Sept: '87") on the mount, blind-stamped "Copyright 1887 | by George C. Cox" at lower left, verso of the🅠 m🦄ount has written in pencil: "No mat #122 - clean margin with care 11 x 14."; a few spots of dampstaining and small abrasions to photograph, dampstain touching the signature. Framed and glazed.

A signed print of George C. Cox's celebrated portrait of Whitman in old age. This photograph was taken in Cox's New York studio in April 1887. Whitman was celebrating the success of his lecture on Lincoln, delivered on the same visit. Whitman recalled that "six or seven" photographers were made that day, but his friend Jeanette Gilder was present and later wrote, "He must have had twenty pictures taken, yet he never posed for a moment. He simply sat in the big revolving chair and swung himself to the right or to the left, as Mr. Cox directed, or took his hat off or put it on again, his expression and attitude remaining so natural that no one would have suppos▨ed he was sitting for a photograph."

"This was Whitman's favorite photograph from the Cox session ('it seems to me so excellent— so to stand out from all the others'), a photo he began referring to as 'the Laughing Philosopher:' 'Do you think the𒈔 name I have given it justified? do you see the laugh in it? I'm not wholly sure: yet I call it that. I can say honestly that I like it better than any other picture of that set: Cox made six or seven of them: yet I am conscious of something foreign in it— something not just right in that place.' Still, Whitman believed the picture was 'like a total— like a whole story,' and he was proud that Tennyson— to whom Whitman sent the photo— admired it: 'liked it much— oh! so much'" (Charles E. Feinberg Collection, Library of Congress).

George C. Cox of New York was, in his day, considered one of the finest portrait photographers in America. He opened his studio in 1883, and photographed the wealthy and famous for over a decade—among them the leading artists, politicians, writers and🦄 editors, and beauties of the time. One of his most reproduced works was this portrait of Walt Whitman offered here.