John Quincy Adams didn't just have a bad hair day when he sat for his first portrait; he basically thought the entire invention of photography was out to get him. Honestly, imagine being a former President of the United States, a man who survived the American Revolution and the cutthroat politics of the early 19th century, only to be defeated by a silver-plated piece of copper.
The most famous picture of John Quincy Adams isn't a painting. It’s a daguerreotype. This tiny, 5-by-4-inch plate is actually the oldest surviving original photograph of a U.S. President. But for over 150 years, nobody knew where it was. It was sitting in an ebonized wood frame in an attic, passed down through generations of a family who thought the grumpy old man in the image was just a random relative.
The Day the First Presidential Photo Actually Happened
It was March 1843. Washington, D.C. was biting cold. Adams, who was 75 at the time and serving in the House of Representatives long after his presidency ended, walked into the studio of Philip Haas. Haas was a German-born immigrant who had a shop on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Adams wasn't there to make history. He was there because he was curious, though that curiosity quickly turned into annoyance. In his diary, he wrote that the process was "altogether incomprehensible." He had to sit perfectly still for about half a minute. If you’ve ever seen the picture of John Quincy Adams from this session, you’ll notice he looks a bit stiff. That’s because if he moved even an inch, the whole thing would blur into a ghost-like mess.
What’s wild is how we actually found this thing. For decades, historians used a copy made by the famous photography firm Southworth & Hawes. They assumed the original Haas plate was gone. Then, in 2017, a descendant of Horace Everett—a colleague of Adams—brought a "family heirloom" to Sotheby’s. Turns out, Adams had gifted the portrait to Everett back in 1843 because he liked it enough (or perhaps disliked it less than the others) to sign it and hand it over.
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Why Adams Hated His Own Face
You've probably heard that we are our own worst critics. Adams took that to an extreme. While we look at the 1843 Haas daguerreotype and see a dignified, if slightly intense, statesman, he looked at it and saw a "hideous" old man.
He once wrote in his diary after a different session:
"The operation is delicate: subject to many imperceptible accidents, and fails at least twice out of three times... they are all too true to the original."
That last part is the kicker. He was used to oil paintings where artists would smooth out wrinkles or make his eyes look a bit more "presidential." The camera didn't lie. It showed the bags under his eyes, the stray hairs, and the general wear and tear of a man who had been in public service since he was a teenager.
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Breaking Down the 1843 Philip Haas Portrait
If you look closely at the high-resolution scans of the picture of John Quincy Adams, you can spot some pretty human details:
- The White Socks: He’s wearing these distinct, bright white socks that contrast with his dark suit. It's a weirdly personal detail for a guy who was usually so formal.
- The Hands: His hands are slightly blurred. Even the "Old Man Eloquent" couldn't stay perfectly still for 30 seconds.
- The Furniture: The chair and the stack of books in the background weren't his; they were props in Haas’s studio used to make the "subject" look more scholarly.
Not Actually the First, Just the Oldest Surviving
Here is where it gets kinda technical. While this is the oldest surviving original picture of John Quincy Adams, it wasn't the first time a president was photographed.
William Henry Harrison actually sat for a daguerreotype in 1841, right around his inauguration. But that original plate? Gone. Vanished. We only have a "copy of a copy" of it. Adams himself had his picture taken in 1842 by John Plumbe Jr. in Boston, but those were also lost to time.
So, when we talk about the 1843 Haas image, we’re talking about the Holy Grail of political photography. It’s the earliest moment where the chemical reality of a president's face meets the modern world. It sold at auction for $360,500 and now lives in the National Portrait Gallery.
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How to See the Real JQA Today
If you want to track down the different versions of the picture of John Quincy Adams, you don't have to be a billionaire auction bidder. Most are digitized and available for the public to scrutinize.
- The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery: This is where the 1843 Haas original lives. It’s small. If you go see it in person, you'll be shocked at how tiny it is compared to the massive oil paintings hanging nearby.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art: They hold the Southworth & Hawes copy, which for a long time was the only version people knew.
- Library of Congress: They have several lithographs (prints) that were made based on the original daguerreotype. Back then, you couldn't just print a photo in a newspaper, so an artist had to trace the photo onto a stone to make copies.
Understanding these images isn't just about looking at a grumpy guy in a suit. It’s about the shift in how we perceive leaders. Before this, a president was an icon. After this, a president was a human being with messy hair and tired eyes.
To get the full experience of this history, start by comparing the Haas 1843 daguerreotype with the 1848 images taken just before he died. You can see the rapid aging and the physical toll of his final years in the House. Check out the Smithsonian's digital archive to zoom in on the textures of the 1843 plate—you can literally see the brushstrokes on the wall behind him and the individual threads of his cravat.