Winter 2016

Discovery from the field Winter 156 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com I n 2008, Sotheby’s sold a half-plate daguerreotype of Boston merchant Samuel Appleton, probably taken shortly before his death in 1853, for an astonishing $409,000 (Fig. 1). Appleton was not photographed in a studio setting as was customary at the time, but seated in a room now thought to be one of the double parlors of his own house at 37 Beacon Street. Behind him are a marble mantel, presumably Italian-made, of the type favored by the city’s elite in the early nineteenth century, and a secretaire à abattant , probably made in Boston and referred to there as a French secretary. The mirror panels set in a false window behind the secretary reflect an arched paneled door and a pilaster that correspond to the features of the second Appleton parlor visible in the mirror over the fireplace in a group silhouette by Auguste Edouart (Fig. 2). The silhouette shows Samuel Appleton and his wife, Mary, along with her favorite niece and another young woman, in an elegantly outfitted room. The furnishings visible in the silhouette include a large round center table, a pair of sofas similar in design to an example now at Winterthur, and a pier table with carved paw feet. A portrait of Appleton by Gilbert Stuart Newton and a copy of Titian’s Woman with a Mirror hang on the wall. The large looking glasses with carved rosettes and foliate decoration are the type John Doggett made for many Bostonians. A French Secretary, Family Ties, and Serendipity by Richard C. Nylander Fig. 1 : Daguerreotype of Samuel Appelton, Southworth and Hawes, Boston, ca. 1850. 4¼ x 5½ inches. Image courtesy Sotheby’s, New York. Fig. 2 : Auguste Edouart (1789–1861), Silhouette of the Appleton Family (Samuel and Mary Appleton, with her niece, Maria Goodwin, and an unknown woman), ca. 1842. Paper and watercolor, 25 x 37 inches. Historic New England, museum purchase with funds from an anonymous donor (2006.20).