Scarce General Robert E. Lee and Staff Photograph by Brady 

Albumen photograph titled Gen'l Robt. E. Lee and Staff, 7.25 x 8.5 in., on printed mount, 7.75 x 9.5 in., with M.B. Brady & Co.'s Washington, D.C. address and 1866 copyright line. Housed in period frame, 11.75 x 13.75 in. 

A fine image of the aged General, with his son, General George Washington Custis Lee, on the right and Colonel Walter Taylor on the left, taken at Lee's Richmond home on Franklin Street in April, 1865, not long after Appomattox. Mathew Brady made six negatives on the occasion, all are seldom encountered. Brady would later recount that there was little conversation, though Lee changed his position according to his directions. Lee stares straight into the camera, his eyes hard, his jaw set. Mathew Brady had been present from the first battle of the Civil War at Bull Run until this "final" portrait, which completed his photographic coverage of the war, and this photograph is certainly one of his most celebrated images (See Meredith 1981: 60-65.)

Light, even toning to photograph.