Historical Indulgences

ca. 1876, “Geo. Stewart W. Officers Boy”, [carte de visite portrait of a sailor], Solano Photographic Art Studio

On verso “‘Pensacola’ April 25, 1876”..The Pensacola was launched in 1859, commissioned in September 1861. She joined Farragut’s Gulf blockading squadron and was engaged in the battle for New Orleans. She remained in the lower Mississippi for most of war, returning to New York for refitting in spring 1864. After two years she headed around Cape Horn to join the Pacific Squadron, where she was when this image was taken. She was in service, with periods of upgrading, until 1912, when she was sunk by the Navy in San Francisco Bay.

via Cowan’s Auctions

ca. 1870, [Hand tinted tintype portrait of James Weldon Johnson’s mother and sister: Helen Louise Johnson and Agnes Marion Edwards in fancy dress]

via Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, James Weldon Johnson and Grace Nail Johnson Papers

ca. 1852, [daguerreotype portrait of Harriet Beecher Stowe]

via Harvard University, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute, Beecher-Stowe Family Papers

ca. 1880’s, [carte de visite political cartoon regarding Jim Crow laws with some sort of advertising for Swarthout Ackerman & Co. Clothiers], I.U. Doust

via Cowan’s Auctions

ca. 1870, [tintype portrait of a boy sitting with his dog]

via Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Randolph Linsly Simpson African-American Collection

ca. 1860-90’s, [hand tinted tintype portrait of two fencing partners in costume]

via Capitol Gallery, 19th Century Hard Images

ca. 1870’s, [hand-tinted tintype portrait of shy-looking girl sitting on her father’s lap]

via the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

ca. 1860’s, [tintype portrait of a Union infantryman with regulation uniform]

via Heritage Auctions

ca. 1863, “Before the Proclamation; After the Proclamation”, Morse & Peaslee

These two parodic cartes-de-visite, made by the Morse & Peaslee studio in Nashville, Tennessee, present an extremely simplified story of the effects of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 through the figure of a single black boy. The boy most likely did not know how his image would be used, and the photographer probably staged the photographs by asking the boy to use different facial expressions. “Before the Proclamation,” the boy looks slack-jawed and melancholy; “After the Proclamation,” he wears a broad grin that verges on a leer. While the audience for these cartes-de-visite is not clear, the elements of caricature suggest that together they form a derisive commentary on newly freed slaves, as well as a reflection of white anxiety over the consequences of the Proclamation. Ironically, because Tennessee had been under Union control since early 1862, the Proclamation-which liberated slaves only in actively rebellious states-did not apply there. Nonetheless, Nashville felt the effects of the Proclamation, which destabilized the institution of slavery even where it did not abolish it. Slaves in Tennessee abandoned the plantations in large numbers…by early 1864.

via the International Center of Photography

ca. 1885, [tintype portrait of a gentleman playing his guitar with a slight smile]

via Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Randolph Linsly Simpson African-American Collection

ca. 1860-70’s, [carte de visite portrait of a casually posed gentleman, escaped from slavery. Inscription on verso reads “Lewis, who came from the south with Langhorn 1863”], D. Hinkle

via Cowan’s Auctions

ca. 1860’s, [ambrotype portrait of an elderly gentleman with a cane]

via Cowan’s Auctions

ca. 1860-80’s, [ambrotype portrait of a smiling gentleman]

via Cowan’s Auctions

ca. 1880, [tintype portrait of a woman], S. D. Kruger

via Christopher Wahren Fine Photographs, Skylight Gallery

ca. 1860’s, [carte de visite portrait of Union solider in uniform]

via Cowan’s Auctions