A[lexander] Hesler, 1823-1895, Chicago Photographer
The carte de visite photograph of Eugene B. Payne in the Lake Forest College library Special Collections and shown on the Payne collection site reads on its verso "A. Hesler, Artist / No. 118 Lake Street, Chicago."
Alexander Hesler was a significant mid-19th C. American portrait photographer, as a brief article by Bob Zeller in the Encylopedia of Nineteenth Century Photography, vol. 1, 656, details.
Hesler is most noted for his important photographic portraits of Abraham Lincoln, one in Chicago on February 28, 1857 (the second earliest known photo of the future president), and four in Springfield, Illinois, on June 3, 1860, after Lincoln was nominated at the Republican Convention, Chicago. (Interestingly, February 28, 1857, was the date that the articles of the Lake Forest Association were adopted at the Second Presbyterian Church, Chicago, though there is no known indication that Lincoln, a close associate of many founders, was present.) He also had made before that daguerreotype portraits considered among the best.
A Canadian, Hesler had learned the daguerreotype process in 1847, and by 1850 he had a studio in Galena, in northwestern Illinois, a city where many future Chicagoans settled. He rose in the field, being mentioned in trade periodcials and having photographed the Minnehaha Falls in Minnesota and exhibited and won a medal in New York, 1853, showing a panorama of Galena and the Falls of St. Anthony. In 1855 he moved to rapidly growing Chicago, as did others from Galena (Corwiths, Hamills, Ryersons, who later settled near one another also in Lake Forest in the early 20th C). His studio remained there to the 1871 Fire, and then after a period in Evanston, he returned to Chicago in 1880.
Speaking of Hesler's "artistry," one internet author opines that "Other photographers rarely equaled the lifelike poses and expressions Hesler achieved."
Arthur H. Miller
February, 2010