Getty Museum
Portrait of a Boy with Gold-Mining Toys
Creator
James M. FordAmerican Daguerreotypist · 1827–1877
All works by this person →Born in Massachusetts, James May Ford arrived in California in late 1849. Although not much is known about his early years there, he was working in a photographic business in Sacramento by May of 1852. At the end of that year, he moved to San Francisco, where he opened a gallery on Christmas Day. At the height of his career, Ford was one of the most successful daguerreotypists of the Gold Rush era
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- March–September 1854
- Medium
- Hand-colored daguerreotype
- Culture
- American
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
This sweet-faced little boy, barely higher than the table he rests on, gazes at the camera. Families who had relocated to California during the Gold Rush often commissioned photographic portraits like this one to send to relatives back home. The photographer and the boy's family sought to capture the flavor of life in the West by showing the diminutive boy dressed in a Western outfit of loose, open blouse and boots. In front of him on the hexagon-patterned carpet, a pile of wooden toys represents tools of the '49ers: pick, shovel, wheelbarrow, and rifle.
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