John Henri Isaac Browere

Between 1817 and 1834, the artist John Henri Isaac Browere aspired to take life masks of several of America’s leading citizens, which he then incorporated into portrait busts in hopes of creating a portrait gallery of national heroes. Browere worked nearly 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence and captured the likenesses of the Revolutionary War generation just as age and time were taking their toll. While the technique for making life masks dates back to the time of the Pharaohs, Browere’s great success was due to his invention of a quick drying, lighter plaster that did not flatten his subject’s features.

The New York State Historical Association owns almost all of Browere’s surviving sculpted portraits—a unique collection that presents these ancient Americans just as they looked in life, and illustrates the high point of mechanical reproduction before the development of photography.