Three-quarter length portrait of Rev. Crummell, the African American Episcopal priest, educator, missionary, and Black nationalist. Crummell is attired in his clerical robes, over a vest, long sack coat, and trousers. He wears eye glasses, a beard, and holds his right hand up to his chest, holding what is possibly a pipe. Crummell, born in New York and the first African American graduate of the University of Cambridge, lived as a missionary and educator in Liberia between 1853 and 1873. He returned to the U.S. and located to Washington, D.C. where in 1875 he and his congregation founded St. Luke's Episcopal Church, the first independent Black Episcopal church in the city. He spoke before the "Philadelphia Library Company" in St. Thomas's Episcopal Church about "The Natives of Africa, their Habits, Customs, Religion, and Characteristics" on December 10, 1861. Presumably, the portrait photograph was taken around this time., Reproduced in Kenneth Finkel, Nineteenth-Century photography in Philadelphia (New York: Dover Publications in cooperation with the Library Company of Philadelphia, 1980), 9., Originally part of a McAllister Scrapbook of Portraits. McAllister Collection, gift, 1886., Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Gutekunst, a premier Philadelphia photographer, in business from 1860 until 1917, was known as a specialist in portraiture and celebrity portraiture.
Creator
Gutekunst, Frederick, 1831-1917, photographer
Date
[1862]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department cdv portraits - sitter - Crummell [5750.F.122]
