Josiah Johnson Hawes

Josiah Johnson Hawes (1808–1901) was a photographer in Boston, Massachusetts. He and Albert Southworth established the photography studio of Southworth & Hawes, which produced numerous portraits of exceptional quality in the 1840s–1860s.^[1]

Josiah J. Hawes, c. 1850-1855

Advertisement for J.J. Hawes, Boston, 1868

Biography

School Street, Boston, 1850s, National Gallery of Art

J.J. Hawes was born in Wayland, Massachusetts in 1808. He began his career as a portrait painter. He then studied photography in Boston with Francis Fauvel-Gouraud.^[1][2]

In 1843 Hawes and Southworth formed the partnership of Southworth & Hawes, with studios on Tremont Row, in Boston's Scollay Square. The studio produced daguerreotype portraits of many notables, including Lemuel Shaw, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Daniel Webster, and others.^[3] The studio rooms overlooked "a fine orchard, belonging to the Gardiner Greene estate. From these windows, facing Scollay Sq., we looked on the church and gardens of Brattle Street"^[4]

In 1849 Hawes married Nancy Niles Southworth (Albert’s sister). They had three children: Alice, Marion and Edward.^[5]

After the partnership with Southworth dissolved in 1863, Hawes continued as a photographer on Tremont Row for several decades, through the 1890s.^[6] In his later years he was known as the "oldest working photographer in this country."^[7]

Image gallery

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  Demonstration of the Surgical Use of Ether, 1847
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  Young girl with portrait of George Washington, c. 1850
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  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., c. 1850-1856
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  Lajos Kossuth, 1851
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  Unidentified woman, by Southworth & Hawes, c. 1852
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  Portrait of J.J. Hawes and his daughter Marion, by Southworth & Hawes, c. 1852
• 
  View of Brattle St., 1855
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  Boston Common, c. 1875
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  Portrait of Robert Browning, c. 1860s-1880s
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  View of Boston, c. 1860s-1880s
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  Daniel Webster, c. 1883
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  Lemuel Shaw, c. 1883
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  Self-portrait, c. 1890
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  Self-portrait, c. 1890
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  Self-portrait, c. 1895