Phineas Gage - Portraits

Portraits

In 2009 a daguerreotype portrait of Gage (see head of article) was identified—the first likeness of him identified other than a life mask taken around 1850. It shows "a disfigured yet still-handsome" Gage with one eye closed and scars clearly visible, "well dressed and confident, even proud" and holding his iron, on which portions of the inscription (recited above) can be made out. (For decades the daguerreotype's owners had imagined that it showed an injured whaler with his harpoon.) Authenticity was confirmed in several ways, including photo-overlaying the inscription visible in the portrait against that on the actual tamping iron in Harvard's Warren Anatomical Museum; and similarly, matching the injuries seen in the portrait against those preserved in the life mask.

Macmillan cites the daguerreotype as consistent with the social recovery hypothesis already described. To better understand the question, he and collaborators are actively seeking additional evidence on Gage's life and behavior, and describe certain kinds of historical material for which they hope readers will remain alert, such as letters or diaries by physicians whom their research indicates Gage may have met, or by persons in certain places Gage seems to have been.

In 2010 a second portrait of Gage (above) was identified. This new image, copies of which are in the possession of at least two different branches of the Gage family, depicts the same subject as the daguerreotype identified in 2009, according to Gage researchers consulted by the Smithsonian Institution.