Historidex / Faces

Historical Portraits: Faces From the Past

Ordinary and extraordinary people from the past, looking straight at the camera.

32 historical portraits stories

• The Tuskegee Airmen before a mission 1945, Ramitelli, Italy

  Pilots of the 332nd Fighter Group at a briefing in Ramitelli, Italy. From this base they escorted American bombers over Austria, Hungary, Poland and Germany.

• Frederick Douglass c. 1879, United States

  Historians call him the most photographed American of the 1800s. He used portraits on purpose to fight racism, and he almost never smiled for the camera, to avoid feeding the racist image of the happy enslaved man.

• Three women from Guadeloupe c. 1905-1914, Ellis Island, New York, USA

  Augustus Sherman was a senior clerk at Ellis Island with no photography training. In the early 1900s he took more than 200 portraits of new arrivals, often people held for medical checks or questioning. These three women had come from Guadeloupe.

• The New York Female Giants 1913, New York, United States

  A Library of Congress caption names these players as Miss Schnall, the catcher, and Miss Slachu of the New York Female Giants. Schnall, the captain, was among the American women barred from 1912 Olympic diving. Police stopped one Giants game at Lenox Oval in May 1913.

• A freed slave looks back 100 to 150 CE, Roman Egypt

  A boy named Eutyches looks out from a portrait painted about 1,900 years ago in Roman Egypt. A Greek inscription calls him a freedman, meaning a freed slave. It ends with 'I signed,' which may be the painter's signature, with no known parallel in mummy portraits, or may refer to his freeing.

• The only woman Medal of Honor winner about 1911, United States

  Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, a Union Army surgeon in the Civil War, is still the only woman to receive the Medal of Honor. In 1917 the Army revoked it, along with about 900 others, but she kept wearing it. The Army restored it in 1977, 58 years after she died.

• A Nok Head from Nigeria 20 to 620 CE, Nigeria

  The first Nok terracotta turned up in 1928 in an alluvial tin mine in Nigeria, about 24 feet down. Outside Egypt, Nok sculptures are the earliest large figurative art known in Africa. Cleveland dates this head by thermoluminescence to 20 to 620 CE.

• Jerrie Cobb in the gimbal rig 1960, Cleveland, Ohio

  In April 1960, pilot Jerrie Cobb volunteered to ride NASA's gimbal rig at the Lewis lab in Cleveland, which spun a seat on three axes to train astronauts to steady a tumbling capsule. That February she had passed the same Lovelace Clinic medical tests the Mercury astronauts took.

• Pillow Fight at the Seminary 1897, West Orange, New Jersey, USA

  Young women in night robes hold a pillow fight until a teacher walks in, and one of them crawls under a bed. Edison's studio filmed it in the spring of 1897 and registered it for copyright on 21 April.

• Truganini of the Nuenonne people 1866, Tasmania, Australia

  Truganini, a Nuenonne woman of Bruny Island, sat for this portrait in 1866. She feared her body would go to a museum, and after her death in 1876 the Royal Society of Tasmania exhumed it. Her skeleton was displayed in Hobart until 1947, and her ashes were scattered in the D'Entrecasteaux Channel in 1976.

• A Neolithic Idol from Vinča 4500 to 3500 BCE, Vinca, Serbia

  Vinča settlements in Serbia were among the largest in prehistoric Europe. Cleveland dates this clay figure to 4500 to 3500 BCE and calls it a probable cult idol. Some researchers think the symbols on Vinča pottery are the earliest proto writing.

• Two Women Box for Edison 1901, United States

  Two women box in front of a painted garden in this Edison film published in May 1901. The Library of Congress record says they were most likely the Gordon Sisters, Bessie and Minnie, a stage act of the day.

• Foottit and Chocolat Clown Around 1897 to 1900, Paris, France

  Two Paris circus clowns, George Foottit and Rafael Padilla, known as Chocolat, tumble through a slapstick routine around a chair. The Lumière company filmed six of their routines between 1897 and 1900.

• The Castles and the foxtrot c. 1910 to 1918, United States

  Vernon and Irene Castle popularized the foxtrot and ran a New York dance school called Castle House. Vernon later flew for Britain's Royal Flying Corps and died in a training crash near Fort Worth, Texas, on February 15, 1918.

• Maria Mitchell at Vassar's telescope 1878, Poughkeepsie, New York

  On October 1, 1847, Maria Mitchell found a comet from Nantucket, and the King of Denmark gave her a gold medal for it. In 1865 she became Vassar's professor of astronomy and director of its observatory. This postcard shows her there in June 1878.

• The 442nd Regiment's color guard 1944, Bruyères area, France

  The 442nd Regimental Combat Team, made up of Japanese American soldiers, was the most decorated U.S. unit for its size and length of service. It earned 21 Medals of Honor. These color guards stood at attention near Bruyères, France, on November 12, 1944, as citations were read.

• Nero's Portrait, Recut as Vespasian 64 to 79 CE, Roman Italy

  This marble head began as a portrait of Nero. After he died in 68 CE his memory was condemned, and a sculptor recarved it as Vespasian, who took power in 69. A line at the back shows where Nero's long hair was cut short, and his receding lower lip survived.

• Prince Alamayou, age seven 1868, Isle of Wight, England

  Julia Margaret Cameron photographed Prince Alamayou in July 1868, when he was seven. When British troops stormed Magdala that April, his father, Emperor Tewodros II of Ethiopia, killed himself, and the British took the boy to England. He died in 1879 at 18, and Ethiopia has asked for his remains back from Windsor.

• Harriet Tubman in her mid-forties 1868-1869, Auburn, New York, USA

  Photographer Benjamin Powelson took this carte-de-visite of Harriet Tubman in Auburn, New York, around 1868 or 1869. It sat in teacher Emily Howland's album until the Library of Congress and a Smithsonian museum bought it jointly in 2017. It shows her younger than in the portraits most people know.

• The Cakewalk on Film 1897 to 1903, United States

  Dancers in top hats and ruffled dresses high step in a cakewalk. Formerly enslaved people described the dance as plantation contests with a cake as the prize. Biograph filmed it in New York, and catalogues date it anywhere from 1897 to 1903.

• A Moche face on a bottle 500 to 800 CE, Northern Peru

  Moche potters in northern Peru used molds to make portrait bottles that seem to show specific people. This one, from 500 to 800 CE, has a cloth head wrap and a painted chin. A bottle at UCLA's Fowler Museum has a very similar face and may come from the same mold.

• One of Only Two Lincoln Life Masks 1860, Chicago, Illinois

  Only two life masks of Abraham Lincoln were made. Sculptor Leonard Volk took this one in Chicago in 1860 by letting wet plaster set on Lincoln's face, a process Lincoln reportedly found anything but agreeable. This bronze was cast from Volk's plaster in 1886 under the supervision of Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

• Sojourner Truth and her grandson's photo 1863, Battle Creek, Michigan, USA

  Sojourner Truth sat for this carte-de-visite with a small photograph of her grandson on her lap. He was James Caldwell of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry. The Confederacy held him as a prisoner of war from 1863 to 1865.

• Bhutan's future king and his guard 1905, Trongsa Dzong, Bhutan

  British official John Claude White photographed Ugyen Wangchuck with his shield-bearing bodyguards at Trongsa Dzong in 1905. He was then the Tongsa Penlop, governor of central Bhutan. On December 17, 1907, he became the first king of Bhutan.

• The Disputed Death Mask of Napoleon 1821, Saint Helena

  Napoleon died on Saint Helena on May 5, 1821, and the first death mask was made two days later. Accounts disagree on who cast the original mould, his doctor Antommarchi or the British surgeon Francis Burton. The Met's bronze, made around 1833, is credited to Antommarchi.

• John Brown with his hand raised 1846 to 1847, Hartford, Connecticut, USA

  Augustus Washington, a Black daguerreotypist, photographed John Brown around 1846 or 1847. It is the earliest known portrait of him. His raised hand is read as an oath against slavery, and the flag may be his Subterranean Pass Way standard.

• Lhasa Under British Occupation 1904, Lhasa, Tibet

  A crowd fills a Lhasa street in 1904, after British troops invaded Tibet, killing hundreds of Tibetans in battles on the way, and occupied the city. Tibetan officials were pressed to sign a treaty with a 7.5 million rupee indemnity. John Claude White took the photo, looking toward the Jokhang temple.

• The Emperor Who Grew a Beard 130 to 138 CE, Italy

  Hadrian's cropped beard set him apart from the clean shaven emperors before him. A portrait head like this one stood in for the emperor across the empire, and the beard stayed in style on imperial portraits until Constantine in the early 4th century.

• Katherine Johnson Checks the Numbers 1966, Hampton, Virginia

  Before his 1962 orbital flight, John Glenn asked for Katherine Johnson to check the computer's orbit numbers by hand. She had already calculated the trajectory for Alan Shepard's 1961 flight. Johnson joined the NACA at Langley in 1953, and this photo was taken in 1966.

• Plautia Hesperis, Lived Sixteen Years 1st century CE, Italy

  The front of this marble urn reads PLAVTIA HESPERIS, VIXIT AN XVI: Plautia Hesperis, lived sixteen years. Before about 100 CE Romans usually cremated their dead. The Romans thought the eagle on the lid carried the soul to the gods.

• Sally Ride in Orbit 1983, Space Shuttle Challenger

  Sally Ride was 32 when Challenger launched on 18 June 1983, making her the first American woman in space. She flew as a mission specialist on the six day STS-7 mission, which ended with a landing at Edwards Air Force Base on 24 June.

• The wedding of Tom Thumb 1863, New York City, USA

  In February 1863, Charles Stratton, billed as General Tom Thumb, married Lavinia Warren at Grace Church in New York. Her sister Minnie Warren and Commodore Nutt stood up with them. The wedding made front pages, and Mathew Brady's studio photographed the group.

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