Portrait of William Byrd Powell M.D. (1799-1866)

Clement Reeves Edward worked as a photographer and portrait painter in Cincinnati, Ohio and throughout Kentucky. In this portrait, he depicted Dr. William Byrd Powell, a phrenologist described as having eccentric manners. Phrenologists incorrectly believed that the size and shape of human crania indicated one’s character and intellectual abilities. In the mid-nineteenth century, phrenologists developed racist theories about human difference based on the study of Black and Indigenous peoples. Powell argued that experience and education—not genetic inheritance, as some argued—shaped a person’s crania. However, he plundered about 200 skulls from sacred Choctaw, Creek, Alabama, Uchee, Hitchatee, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Attackapas, and Natchez burial sites to use as evidence. In many cases, access to burial grounds was possible because of forced Indian removal in the Southeast. Powell’s reputation as a phrenologist may explain Edward’s attention to his forehead in this portrait, exaggerating its prominence, and thus his alleged intelligence, through lighting.