George Boyer Vashon Portrait Jumps from $882 to $230,400
A rare 170-year-old daguerreotype portrait of George Boyer Vashon, the first licensed African American lawyer in New York State, sold for $230,400 at a Sotheby’s auction in New York on June 25, 2026, after fetching just $882 at Christie’s a year prior when cataloged as an anonymous subject, the Times of India reported.
An Anonymous Listing at Christie’s
The portrait originally appeared in June 2025 as Lot 81 in the Maillet Daguerreotype Collection offered by Christie’s. Cataloged simply as an image of “A well-dressed man with spectacles,” the auction house listed no photographer or sitter. The item carried an estimated value of $1,000 to $1,500.
Before entering the Maillet collection in the 1980s, the portrait belonged to Josephine Cobb. The object itself is an early photographic plate featuring hand-applied coloring and gilt detailing, housed in a leather case with a push-button closure.
The Discovery Inside the Case
Sotheby’s photography specialist Emily Bierman re-examined the unidentified portrait ahead of its subsequent sale. Closer inspection revealed two critical details missing from the original auction listing: a photographer’s signature and an interior inscription. The marking “P Haas NY” linked the piece to Philip Haas, a photographer active between the 1830s and 1860s. An extensive inscription preserved inside the leather case identified the sitter as George Boyer Vashon.
The physical evidence also refined the timeline of the artifact. While Christie’s initially dated the photograph to around 1850, Sotheby’s established that the portrait was made in 1856.
The Legacy of George Boyer Vashon
The man in the newly identified photograph shaped 19th-century American history through his work in law, education, and civil rights. Vashon broke racial barriers by becoming the first licensed African American attorney in New York State. Alongside his legal career, he maintained a prominent role as an abolitionist and educator.
Sotheby’s cataloged the portrait as Lot 206 for its Fine Books and Manuscripts, Including Americanas sale.
The auction house placed a pre-sale estimate of $60,000 to $90,000 on the item. Intense bidding drove the final purchase price to $230,400, more than two and a half times the upper end of the estimate and roughly 260 times what the portrait commanded a year earlier under an anonymous label.