Rosie Day, Wife of the Fiddler James William Day, Ashland, Kentucky

From the Getty Museum record

Doris Ulmann may have photographed Rosie Day in 1928 on the first of her seven trips to the South with John Jacob (“Jack”) Niles (1892-1980). On that trip they spent a good deal of time in Kentucky, where he met with musicians and folklorists, including Jean Thomas (1882-1982) ([95.XM.26](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/101685/doris-ulmann-jean-thomas-and-john-jacob-niles-near-ashland-kentucky-american-about-1932/)) and the fiddler James William ("Blind Bill") Day (1861-1942). Thomas was promoting Day as "Jilson Setters, the singin' fiddler from Lost Hope Hollow." She arranged for him to record for RCA and to perform in New York and London. Ulmann documented Setters and his wife, Rosie Day (1877-1958), in some twelve portrait views, one of them being restricted to his hands and his instrument. Mrs. Day's image also appears to be a study of local dress, both traditional—in terms of the dark sunbonnet—and current—as reflected in the floral-patterned housedress that seems to light her melancholy face from below. Adapted from Judith Keller. *Doris Ulmann*, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996), 92. ©1996, J. Paul Getty Trust.