Untitled
c. 1860
A mid-19th-century tintype made on a one‑sixth‑plate metal plate, created by a photographer to capture a posed, costumed sitter as a personal keepsake.
The small, dark figure reads almost like a ghost: a full‑length person in a tall feathered headdress and patterned skirt stands against a plain ground, their features softened by the tintype’s metallic sheen and the scalloped frame that surrounds the image.
As a modest, durable studio photograph from the 1850s–60s, this tintype shows how inexpensive photographic technology broadened access to portraiture and preserved fleeting fashions, performances, and identities that painting rarely recorded.
Medium
Tintype, one-sixth plate, in leather case
Dimensions
2 3/4 × 2 1/4" (7.1 × 5.8 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Celeste Bartos
Accession
84.1974
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
