The David Edwin engraving (left) published in Analectic Magazine (1814) suggests the subject was of short stature, and in the accompanying biography, Porter's friend Washington Irving refers to his “feeble frame.” The Captain's son, David Dixon Porter, also mentions the fragile frame of his father. David Long's biography of Porter (Nothing Too Daring) notes that “—one nineteenth century historian [unidentified by Long] described him as ‘a small, slight, and rather ill-favored New England man’—.” The Browere life mask (right) was created in 1825, and Porter himself stated that “Nothing can be more accurate and expressive.” Both images display a distinctive tuft of hair at the top of the subject's head and extended sideburns.

 

The similarity of the engraving and the life mask raises a question about the identity of the person seen in Charles Willson Peale's portrait (center), which was created about midway between the other two images. The sitter's demeanor does not agree with Peale's description of a man “ … seldom a minute in the same position, for when anyone speaks he turns toward them and never thinks that it is necessary to keep himself in the same view to the painter.” In fact, for the sitter to be Porter, he would have had to change his hair style, shave his sideburns, alter his facial characteristics, and acquire the more robust physique suggested by the Peale portrait. And then he would have to revert to his former appearance before Browere created his life mask. Since this seems unlikely (to say the least), the subject of the Peale portrait is presumably someone other than David Porter.