?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
(PHOTOGRAPHY.) Inscribed carte-de-visite portrait of early photographer James Presley Ball. Albumen photograph, 3 1/2 x 2 inches, on original mount with gilt border and no backmark, inscribed on verso "Respectfully J.P. Ball"; minimal foxing and wear. [Cincinnati, OH?], circa 1870?
John Presley Ball (1825-1904) was one of the first Black photographers in America, learning his trade in Boston, launching his own itinerant studio in 1845, settling in Cincinnati from 1849 through the early 1870s, and then running studios in a succession of several southern and western towns until his death in Hawaii in 1904.
In addition to the inscription on verso, this portrait bears a close facial resemblance to the only other portrait of Ball we have traced. He has considerably more hair and a shorter beard here than in the later portrait; it appears to depict him in his forties.
This portrait was very likely taken in Ball's own studio. Another undated carte-de-visite credited to Ball (cited on the Luminous Lint website as belonging to William Jones) features what appears to be the same plinth as a studio prop. The photographer may have been Ball's brother-in-law Alexander Thomas (born circa 1825), his Cincinnati business partner until 1860; or more likely Ball's son James Presley Ball Jr. (1851-1923), who was a clerk in the Cincinnati studio by 1870, and later a full partner.
