Thread: date photo wanted

Attachment 319





hi



This photo has always been know in our family as a spainsh lady that was married to a watts or bishop in my family tree but can't find her by resarch so hoping that if i new the date of this person i might know where to look i have sent two slighty diffrent copys of the same photo as they were sent to me.



thank you



tim watts

Hi

This is an intruiging one to date. The style is much earlier than you would expect to find on most photos - her dress is more like those worn in the 1840s to 1860s - ditto her hair, with it smoothed back on each side of her brow(look at some early photographs of Queen Victoria at the time of her marriage and whilst her children were young, and you will see she often wears a similar shaped bodice, sleeves and hair to the ones in the photo)



Whoever it was must have paid a lot for to have the photo done (unless of course she was in an area where the fashions were later than in England).

hi thank you for the dating of the photo and is it possable it would be any early than 1840? and how shaw are you of the date.



would it make any diffrence if the photo was spainish as think it could be a spanish lady in the phot so might beenm taken there but think was taken in england



thank you

tim

Hi Tim



Yes the style could certainly be earlier but not much - maybe 10 or 15 years. I'm no expert but did do a course on the history of costume (though many years ago) and am basing my judgment on the work done for that. The thing is that of course that photography really was in its infancy in the 1850s - most people don't seem to have family photos until about the 1880s on - so its unlikely to have been taken earlier than that. (Though I am really not sure about the history of photography at all). Of course people did sometimes wear clothes long after the fashions had changed, so wearing an earlier fashion is no guarantee of the date. (Of course if she was living abroad then fashions could have been quite different there). The other possibility is that it is a photo of an earlier portrait, but that probably isn't likely. Are there any identifying marks on the photo - name of a photgrapher for example - either printed on the back or embossed on the front?

hi



there was something writen on the frount i am told bye my aunt but now unreconisable or un readable and i only have the what you see on the piture. it would make sence to me if it was slighty early i was hope this lady was born around 1800 or early witch seems to macth the date you come up with.



thank you for all your help



tim

Is your aunt alive? If so, it would be well worth contacting her to see if she could remember what was on the front. It would also be worth scrutinising it under different lights and light sources.

There are pointers within the photograph that can get you towards a date period. For instance the evidence of epauletts on the bodice indicates a date period before 1870/71 as this was when they were ceased to be used as part of a fashion style on bodices. The fact that she has a jacket bodice with closed cuffed bishop sleeving of the style shown also indicates an earlier period than 1870 as does the hair style with its parting in the centre and the ear's covered as they are. But what pre-dates it to a certain period is the use of the shawl draped over the fore arms as it is and because of this I would suggest that this study was taken in the period between 1852 and 1869 but more to the earlier part of this date period that I have suggested. A close up of the image also shews that she may have been wearing a ring on her third finger of her left hand as there appears to be an indentation at the point where one would have a ring. As for people having family photographs taken before the 1880's this certainly did happen. Early photographer's in Great Britain usually went under the title of Artist's and Photographer's on their trade cards and can be found in some trade directories from the mid 1850's "billed" as such. The early photograph's were Daguerreotypes which take their names from Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre who had perfected the process along with Isidore Niepce in 1839 and I suspect yours could be of that type.



don