After drawing his statue at the State House, I started reading up on Daniel Webster and became captivated by these two images:   

Both these cartoon images come from original images made of Daniel Webster during his lifetime.  Young Daniel is drawn from a painting by Francis Alexander (1834 or 1835), which appears to be a rather touched-up romanticized version of Alexander’s own “Black Dan” painting.  Then, Old Dan comes from a Matthew Brady daguerreotype image (as archived by Library of Congress) (1850 or 1851).

This progression of media, from romantic oil portrait to stark scathing black and white photograph, speaks volumes for the changes Webster saw in his country over his lifetime.

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