Walt Whitman by J.W. Black of Black and Batchelder, ca. 1860

This rugged, footloose portrait was taken by James Wallace Black, of Black & Batchelder, in March 1860, when Whitman was in Boston to oversee the typesetting of his 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. Black’s studio at 173 Washington Street was less than a block from the publishing firm of Thayer & Eldridge, who apparently commissioned the photograph to promote the 1860 edition. The New York Illustrated News, for example, used the portrait as the basis for the engraving of Whitman that appeared with its review of Leaves of Grass on June 2, 1860. Another photograph from the same session with Black shows Whitman seated in profile, but Whitman appears to have rejected that pose, as only three copies are known.

The history of the portrait escaped Whitman—he began calling it "the mysterious photograph" when he first saw it in 1889, and he told Horace Traubel that "it's a devilish, tantalizing mystery" and he would "hate to give it up!" (With Walt Whitman in Camden, Thursday, March 21, 1889). "When it could have been taken—by whom—where—I cannot even guess" (Friday, February 15, 1889). Whitman identified the date of this photo as between 1845 and 1850, but no one has agreed with him; Richard Maurice Bucke guessed 1856, but most estimates have been a later date. Seeing this photo late in his life, Whitman exclaimed, "How shaggy! looks like a returned Californian, out of the mines, or Coloradoan" (Friday, February 15, 1889), but he was fascinated with "the expression of benignity" (Saturday, February 16, 1889) that shone through, though he felt "such benignity, such sweetness, such satisfiedness—it does not belong. I know it often appears—but that's the trick of the camera, the photographer" (Friday, February 15, 1889).

Whitman called it his "young man" (Saturday, February 16, 1889) picture ("when did I not look old? At twenty-five or twenty-six they used already to remark it" [Friday, February 15, 1889]), and claimed "it is me, me, unformed, undeveloped—hits off phases not common in my photos" (Saturday, February 16, 1889). He described his physique at the time: "I was very much slenderer then: weighed from one hundred and fifty-five to one hundred and sixty-five pounds: had kept that weight for about thirty years: then got heavier." Whitman was amused by the clothing—"how natural the clothes!" (Friday, February 15, 1889); "the suit was a beautiful misfit, as usual, eh?"—and he was impressed with "its calm don't-care-a-damnativeness—its go-to-hell-and-find-outativeness: it has that air strong, yet is not impertinent: defiant: yet it is genial" (Thursday, March 21, 1889). Even at the time, Whitman seems to have enjoyed the spectacle he created, especially on the streets of Puritan Boston. Writing in 1860, Whitman told a friend, Abby Price, “I create an immense sensation in Washington street. Everybody here is so like everybody else—and I am Walt Whitman!—Yankee curiosity and cuteness, for once, is thoroughly stumped, confounded, petrified, made desperate.”

A copy in the Library of Congress notes (in Traubel's handwriting): "The only photographic copy of this picture known is in the possession of McKay, Phila. Used by W.W. In the pocket Edition of L of G. 1889."

For more information on J. W. Black, see "Notes on Whitman's Photographers"; see also Stefan Hughes, Catchers of the Light, 2012, p. 348, note 28.