daguerreotype

Luis Garcia Hevia was before photographer miniaturist painter, and his artistic training in the workshop of Pedro Jose Figueroa. He was the grandson of the hero Francisco Javier García Hevia Monteros, shot by Pablo Morillo during the war of independence of that country. From 1842 he devoted himself mainly to photography but never let the paint.

He worked as a painter and photographer in the cities of Bogota, Santa Fe de Antioquia (1849), Bucaramanga and Maracaibo (Venezuela). He also devoted himself to teaching drawing in Bogota from 1843. It had a strong social and political life by participating in the founding of several societies and lodges philanthropic and progressive, and aprticipó in the war Colombian radicalism against the conservative government between 1860 and 1862 during which he was wounded in the head.

Luis Garcia Hevia has been considered one of the foremost painters of the history painting of the nineteenth century in his home country. In the field of photography, he is considered one of the forerunners of the work of photojournalist, for his work as a photographer showing the effects of the Colombian civil war between conservatives and liberals after the siege in the former convent of San Agustin de Bogota.

The daguerreotype is signed in the lower left corner of the plate surface (under the spacer) with the text "?.?. Hevia 1845".