BALTIMORE — Edgar Allan Poe’s fertile imagination has endured for more than 150 years — and so has his pale, death-haunted image, with his sunken eyes, a trim mustache and unruly mop of curly hair.
However, scholars say Poe looked far more vigorous, perhaps even dashing, in his earlier years than he does in the well-known series of daguerreotypes taken in the final years of his life.
The more robust Poe is captured in a small watercolor by A.C. Smith, one of just three surviving portraits of the author, which will be shown publicly for the first time Saturday and is expected to fetch tens of thousands of dollars at auction.
“It actually represents Poe as he appeared to his contemporaries — a handsome, sophisticated young man on the rise,” said Cliff Krainik, the owner of the portrait. “The daguerreotypes show him in his rather dissipated state, where he has gone through the difficulties of his life.”
Smith drew another sketch of Poe around the same time that served as a model for an engraving in Graham’s Magazine in 1845. Of that sketch, Poe wrote: “It scarcely resembles me at all.”
