National Portrait Gallery buys oldest photo of US first lady

The Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery has purchased what is believed to be the earliest ever photo of a US first lady.

The daguerreotype - an image created through the first photographic process - shows former First Lady Dolley Madison, the wife of the fourth US president, James Madison.

The photograph, discovered recently, likely dates back to 1846, the museum said.

The Smithsonian Institution purchased the daguerreotype for $456,000 (£356,000) at a Sotheby's auction in June.

The portrait is "one of exceedingly few surviving photographs of the woman who has defined for two centuries what it means to be the First Lady of the United States of America", Sotheby's said in a statement.

The auction company said the photo was discovered when its sellers were cleaning out a basement after a relative had died.

The photograph - a quarter-plate-sized daguerreotype - was taken by John Plumbe Jr when Ms Madison was in her late 70s, most likely in the late spring or early summer of 1846, according to the Smithsonian Institution.

Mr Plumbe Jr was an English entrepreneur who later became a photographer. He also created the earliest known photos of the US Capitol.

Born into a Quaker family in North Carolina in 1768, Dolley Madison married James Madison in 1794.

The first lady was known for "her hospitality" and "establishing herself at the center of the Washington social season" while her husband was in office, according to the White House Historical Association.

James Madison - known as the father of the US constitution - served as president from 1809 to 1817.

The photograph of his wife joins the National Portrait Gallery’s collection of around 230 portraits of first ladies.

The acquisition comes after the National Portrait Gallery bought the first known photograph of a US President - an 1843 daguerreotype of John Quincy Adams - in 2017.