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Find My Past Blog - Ask the photo expert – portrait of grandparents?

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  • Find My Past Blog - Ask the photo expert – portrait of grandparents?

    Our photo dating expert, Jayne Shrimpton, analyses your family photos.
    Edwin Reffell sent us his photo and asked:
    ‘This is a photograph that my grandparents kept. I do not know who the people are, or when or where it was taken. Please could you help?’
    Jayne says:
    Click to enlarge


    ‘This photograph looks to be a carte de visite, a neat photographic print measuring around 10 x 6.5cms. Cdvs first became fashionable c.1860 and were still being produced in the early 1900s. They dominated Victorian portrait photography and many examples survive today in family picture collections. Being mounted on card, these photographs were usually printed with the studio name and address – sometimes on the front of the mount, below the image, but generally on the back, where there was ample space for the photographer to publicise his or her business.
    I assume that, unusually, your card mount is blank on the reverse: this is a pity, as the studio town or city would give the likely place of residence for these ancestors. I’m afraid that it is unlikely you will be able to find this out, unless, for example, another family member has another copy of the photograph that happens to name the location.
    We only have the visual image to go on here, but fortunately the appearance of these ancestors can be dated fairly closely. In a mixed group scene such as this, it is most useful to look at adult female fashions as women’s dress changed more rapidly and distinctly in the past than did male styles. The seated lady wears a narrow dress fashioned from dark cloth with a contrasting central velvet panel. This appears to be the slender, one-piece, front-buttoning ‘princess’ dress that was fashionable during the later 1870s and beginning of the 1880s. Her hairstyle, drawn back severely and featuring a short curled fringe, was also one of the main style in vogue at that time. Based on these clues, I estimate that this photograph was taken c.1877-1882.
    The man’s lounge suit, knotted ‘four-in-hand’ neck tie and bowler hat all look right for a late 1870s/early 1880s date, while the young child’s frock with contrasting panels echoes that of his or her mother’s. This child, who appears to be about three or four years of age could be either a girl or a boy, since infants of both sexes wore frocks until boys were ‘breeched’ and put into knickerbockers when around four or five years old.
    Jayne Shrimpton

    Unfortunately it is impossible to tell the gender of the baby either, who is sitting up and must be at least eight or nine months old, perhaps approaching one year. It is lovely to see the family dog in this group too, as live animals don’t appear in studio portraits very often at this early date. Some studio photographers went to great lengths to publicise the fact that they were willing to photograph babies and animals, a sure sign that capturing these restless, hard-to-control subjects could be tricky!
    There may seem little evidence here to help with firm identification of these forebears; however, remember that this photograph must be closely linked in some way to one of your grandparents. Also, a closely-dated photograph that includes small children (whose ages can be judged more accurately than adults’ ages) offers the potential for working out fairly close birth dates – information that can be checked against dates on the family tree. These children were probably this couple’s first two offspring (unless any others died when infants). Born around 2 1/2 to 3 years apart, their birth dates must both fall within the years 1873-1882. I’m not aware of your grandparents’ birth dates, but perhaps one of them – or one of their parents – could be one of these children.’
    If you’d like to send your photo to Jayne, please register or opt to receive newsletters in ‘my account’. Jayne only has time to analyse two photos each month, but if yours wasn’t chosen this time, you could be lucky next month!


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