This photo of Sarah Helen Whitman looks to be the original version of the photo taken by William Coleman and collaged by Whitman to give herself the appearance of the Greek goddess, Athena.

In her correspondence to Julia Deane Freeman, Whitman wrote on July 12, 1861:

“I write just to ask where you are & to send specimens of some photographs. Tell me which you like best and you shall have better ones in the style you prefer bye & bye. You can keep two of these. Perhaps I shall ask you to give me back the two you like least, but not immediately. Thinking that fine feathers make fine birds I have costumed two of my photographs which in some of the pictures gives character & is an acknowledged improvement. There is something curious about these pictures—Two represent the left side of the face & two the right side. Those of the left side are both decidedly masculine—the other two as decidedly feminine. Now modern physiologists tell us that the brain is dual & the left side positive.”

In the next letter, she wrote:

“I have been waiting for the return of the man who is to copy my best photographs for you. And now I shall have to defer sending them till my own return…I send such imperfect copies as I have which may serve to remind you of me. The one on the reverse of ‘lady Macbeth’ looks enough like my grandmother to have been taken for her. The eye seems to me my own. The hood was made from the ear of a Gorilla! Cut from Harper’s Magazine.”

I believe that this photo is one of those described by Whitman in her letter to Freeman. The costumed image of Whitman as “lady Macbeth” and the other two photos representing the other side of her face have not yet surfaced anywhere.