Eduard and Bertha Wehnert Untitled (Portrait of a Lady) Around 1845–47 Daguerreotype hand coloured. 8,5 x 6,8 cm visible passepartout, 13 x 11,4 cm total dimensions. On the original passepartout below the picture the printed indication 'Eduard u. Bertha Wehnert fec.' - In original frame. As the first professional photographer in Europe, Bertha Wehnert-Beckmann has entered the history of photography and is now considered an undisputed pioneer in this field. Born in Cottbus in 1815, she first learned how to lace her hair before she became familiar with the new medium from 1840, only one year after she introduced the Daguerreotype method. After serving as a Daguerreotype artist in Dresden, Cottbus and various Thuringian towns, she settled permanently in Leipzig in 1844, where she worked in the studio of Eduard Wehnert. The marriage of the two in 1845 lasted not long, after the early death of her husband in the summer of 1847, Wehnert-Beckmann successfully continued the business for almost four decades, until 1882. Her excellent reputation, thanks to which Bertha Wehnert-Beckmann was able to assert herself as a woman in a technical profession against male competition, provided her with numerous orders from the upscale Leipzig society. She portrayed personalities from high aristocracy, the military and the well-known bourgeoisie, and among her most prominent clients in the 1840s included young Johannes Brahms and the garden architect Peter Joseph Lenné. Between 1849 and 1851, she stayed in New York, where she operated a studio near Broadway, and among others Samuel Houston and Millard Fillmore, 13th century. President of the U.S., was one of their customers. She was recommended by the Leipzig press, probably also due to her gender, in particular a female clientele, and thus numerous portraits of women and children emerged, which suggests an attribution of the work coming here to call for Bertha Wehnert-Beckmann. The portraited lady is not identified, the passepartout with ornamental gold decor and the imprint "Eduard u. Bertha Wehnert fec." (even after her husband's death, she initially stuck to this designation) suggests a date between 1845 and 1847. Daguerreotypen Bertha Wehnert-Beckmanns are located in various museum and private collections. Provenance: private collection, Southern Germany