# 45131

HAWLEY, Gideon Anson (aka Gedeon Andrés) (1829-1889)

Two rare cartes de visite by an American photographer working in Guatemala, 1863-64.

$500.00 AUD

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Two cartes de visite with uniform 101 x 61 mm mounts, each with four small head-and-shoulder portraits – one of men, the other of women; these all appear to be salt prints (not albumen prints), cut into oval format and mounted in an identical configuration on each carte; the versos have the same lithographed back mark in black which reads: ‘G. A. Hawley, successor to W. S. Buchanan / Guatemala, C.A. [Central America]’; the male portraits carte has some staining caused by the glue used in the mounting process, otherwise the pair is in  good condition.

Gideon Anson Hawley (aka Gedeon Andrés Hawley) was born in Charlton, New York in 1829. After qualifying as a medical doctor he entered the US army and served with the rank of lieutenant during the so-called Filibuster War of 1855-57 in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. After resigning from the army he was appointed American consul in Tabasco. He then appears to have settled in Guatemala in order to commence a career as a coffee planter. Hawley was also a proficient photographer – serious enough to have his own carte de visite back mark stating that he was the successor to W. S. Buchanan (1817-1875).

Buchanan had only resided in Guatemala for a brief time, having previously lived in Nicaragua where he had worked on the Nicaraguense newspaper since the early 1850s. Like Hawley, Buchanan was a United States consul: he was posted to Guatemala in 1861 by Abraham Lincoln himself. During his appointment he also worked as Guatemala’s first professional photographer – but only up until late 1862, when he returned to Florida.

The fact that Buchanan departed Guatemala in 1862 suggests a likely date of 1863 or 1864 for this pair of cartes de visite by his self-styled “successor”, Hawley. The pair was sourced together, and the similar nature of the composite mounts leads us to believe they were originally commissioned at the same time: the portraits are almost certainly members of one family, although it should be noted that at least one of the male portraits (centre left) may have been copied from an earlier ambrotype or daguerreotype, based on the fashion worn by the sitter.

It is not clear how long Hawley remained in Guatemala, but we do know from genealogical sources that he and his wife Adeladia MacKenney Domínguez had five children, all of whom were born in Guatemala and baptized in Quetzaltenango between 1865 and 1874. Hawley died in New Orleans a considerable time later, in 1889.