Antoine Sonrel (d. 1879)

Alt Text — "Elizabeth Agassiz, half-length portrait, facing slightly left," Antoine Sonrel?, salted paper print, ca. 1850, Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University

Antoine Sonrel worked as a scientific illustrator for natural historian Louis Agassiz in Neuchatel, Switzerland. Agassiz emigrated to the United States and eventually secured a position as professor of zoology and geology at Harvard where Agassiz promoted the now discredited racist theory of polygenism (see the report Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery to learn more). Sonrel also moved to Boston where he operated in a photographic studio. In the 1860s and 1870s he created numerous cartes-de-visite. In addition to Agassiz, his portrait sitters included Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Abbott Lawrence Rotch, the sculptor Anne Whitney, and Agassiz’s wife, Elizabeth Cary Agassiz. Elizabeth Agassiz assisted her husband in the research and publication of his findings. She also co-founded and served as first president of Radcliffe College for women.