Lola Montez

During a visit to Munich in 1847, Henry Meade first met Lola Montez, the notorious beauty then known as the Countess of Landsfeldt. When Montez came to New York to make her American debut as a dancer in December 1851, she posed for portraits at the Meade Brothers’ Broadway gallery. Delighted with the results, she later praised a lithograph based on one of their daguerreotypes as "the best likeness I have yet had taken of myself." On subsequent trips to New York, Montez returned to Meade Brothers for additional sittings, one of which yielded this daguerreotype.