Cleveland Museum of Art

Young Woman in a Patterned Dress

Date: 1860s
Medium: daguerreotype with hand-applied color
Culture: America
Department: Photography
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art
Object ID: 536478

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

Instead of expressing the sitter’s personality, the pose and composition are structured to draw attention to her prized possession: her best dress. The photographer employed a compositional formula and pose frequently chosen by photographers of that era to show off dresses made from fabric with complex, rhythmic geometric patterns. Before the age of the snapshot, being photographed was a special occasion for which people dressed in their best clothing.

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Provenance & credit

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Credit line: Gift of Nina Rosenblum and Lisa Rosenblum

Part of a LinkedCulture topic

19th Century Cased Photographs
These objects are all early photographic formats from the mid-19th century, including daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes, often hand-tinted and presented in cases.
48 objects from 2 institutions