Getty Museum

Portrait of a Young Girl

Date

about 1852

Medium

Daguerreotype

Culture

American

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

The superb quality of this plate is evident in the photographer's sensitive use of light and in the young sitter's natural yet graceful pose; it was extremely difficult to achieve this sense of natural poise with a child sitter. Her cherubic face, rendered partly in shadow, is set against a highlighted, vignetted background that gives the young girl an almost spiritual aura. The light falls most brilliantly on her exposed shoulder and on the lace edging and puffed-up fabric of her dress and sleeve.

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