Like many other celebrities of the nineteenth century, the author Henry James sat for a number of professional photographers and shared these within his social networks. Isabella Stewart Gardner actively collected photographs of her friends and acquaintances, and she displayed many—including this one of a middle-aged James—in cases throughout her museum. James apparently sent Gardner more than one photograph of himself; in a self-deprecating letter from November 1882, he asks whether she would “accept the disagreeable photograph” of him that appeared in a recent national publication.
