the earliest obtainable photograph of Darwin

This is likely the earliest obtainable photograph of Darwin. The naturalist sat for only one daguerreotype, a portrait with his son William made in 1842. “Darwin waited ten years before he sat for his next photograph. By 1853, Darwin’s life as a naturalist was well established, and he was gaining in popularity thanks to his account of his journey on the Beagle and his two volumes of Journal of Researches that resulted from that five-year voyage. The photographers Maull and Polyblank (later known as Maull and Fox) operated a studio in London and made at least four different exposures of Darwin between 1853 and 1857” (Darwin Correspondence Project). This portrait was made as part of Maull and Polyblank’s “Literary and Scientific Portrait Club,” a series of portraits of famous Victorians.  

Darwin disliked the image. In 1855 Darwin wrote to his friend Joseph Dalton Hooker, “You ask about my Photograph; I have been done at the Club; but if I really have as bad an expression, as my photograph gives me, how I can have one single friend is surprising.” Five years later he asked Hooker, “Heaven-sake oblige me & burn that now hanging up in your room. It makes me look atrociously wicked.” 

This portrait is the only obtainable photograph of Darwin as he appeared at the time of the writing and publication of On the Origin of Species. When Darwin published the Origin in 1859, he was still beardless, as in this photograph. He began growing a beard in 1862 and it had achieved its full iconic majesty by 1866. Darwin discussed beards at great length in The Descent of Man (1872), observing in very small part, “we know that with savages, the men of the beardless races take infinite pains in eradicating every hair from their faces, as something odious, whilst the men of the bearded races feel the greatest pride in their beards.” 

Charles Darwin is one of the most recognizable figures of the nineteenth century, as befits his great fame during his lifetime and up to the present. His striking appearance captured the imagination of photographers, most notably Julia Margaret Cameron, whose portraits of the scientist are iconic. Darwin was keenly interested in photography. He encouraged his sons to take up the art in their childhoods, and the great scientist commissioned a number of portraits of himself. According to Darwin biographer Janet Browne, the wealthy naturalist’s penchant for commissioning photographic portraits, and their widespread commercial distribution, helped to cement the lasting connection between Darwin and the theory of evolution in popular thought. 

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