Portrait of Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre (1787-1851), the French artist and physicist who invented the daguerreotype process of photography. This daguerreotype was made by Charles Richard Meade (1826-1858), an American photographer who travelled to France in 1848 to make a commemorative portrait of Daguerre, unaware that the inventor of the technique intensely disliked sitting for his own portrait. He was, however, coaxed into sitting for five portraits, which Meade later exhibited in New York. Because daguerreotypes were unique objects, Meade made daguerreotype copies of the ones he deemed especially popular with Americans.