Historical Indulgences

ca. 1860-70’s, [carte de visite portrait John Nesbit being attended to by the apparition of his dead wife], William Mumler

via Heritage Auctions

Happy Halloween, everyone! Today, Historical Indulgences will feature a few tags from the blog in spirit of the season: spirit, post mortem, emotive or otherwise photo-manipulated antique images.

ca. 1855-95, [carte de visite portrait of a small child with a shot gun and a dead rabbit], George W. Valleau

via the Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Carl Mautz Collection

ca. 1860’s, [ambrotype portrait of a gentleman, propped up with pillows on a bed, holding a large book]

via Christopher Wahren Fine Photographs, Skylight Gallery

ca. 1863, [albumen portrait of a gentleman in a chainmail tunic, posing as a dying soldier], Adrien Constant de Rebecque

via the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photographs Collection

ca. 1850, [daguerreotype portrait of a woman with a daguerreotype of a gentleman, presumably her husband]

via the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Photography Collection

ca. 1853, [daguerreotype portrait of Joseph Avery stranded on rocks in the Niagara River], Platt D. Babbitt

Three men boating in the Niagara River were overwhelmed by the river’s strong current, lost control of their boat, and crashed into a rock. The current carried two men immediately over the Falls to their deaths. The daguerreotype shows the third man, stranded on a log which had jammed between two rocks. He weathered the current for eighteen hours before succumbing to the river. The image is an early example of a news photograph.

via the Library of Congress, Daguerreotype Collection

ca. 1850, [daguerreotype portrait of Rosaline Holmes Harrison with her deceased child], Jaquith

via the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Batcheler, Hartshorne, and Sahlin families Papers Collection

ca. 1861-65, [tintype portrait of Edwin Chamberlain, non-commissioned Union Officer, holding his guitar]

Accompanying the tintype is a piece of paper stating his familial reliations and his death during the Civil War.

via Heritage Auctions

ca. 1867, “The Shirt of the Emperor, Worn during His Execution”, François Aubert

This grisly photograph depicts the bullet-riddled shirt of the Austrian Archduke Maximilian I, who was appointed Emperor of Mexico by Napoleon III in 1864. Maximilian’s puppet regime lasted only three years; when the French army withdrew from Mexico in 1867, he was captured, tried, and executed by the nationalist supporters of Benito Juarez. Aubert, a French photographer working in Mexico, photographed Maximilian’s corpse and clothing, producing a sensational and somewhat gruesome record of the execution and the politically charged relics of the slain emperor.

via the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photographs Collection

ca. 1850’s [post mortem daguerreotype of a woman with a book]

via Live Auctioneers, Be-Hold

ca. 1890’s, [portrait of a French scientist with specimens], N. Charmantray

via Luminous Lint, Paul Frecker

ca. 1850, [post mortem daguerreotype of a clergyman in his casket]

via the International Center of Photography

ca. 1860’s, “In Life How Fair, The End How Beautiful”, [memorial carte de visite]

via Exposures: Photography and Death, Audrey Linkman

ca. 1887, [Portrait of the Harvey Andrews family at the grave of the youngest child], Soloman Butcher 

via Secure the Shadow: Death and Photography in America, from the Nebraska State Historical Society, Jay Ruby

ca. 1845, [portrait of a gentleman holding his dead wife]

via Exposures: Photography and Death, Audrey Linkman