Figure 1.--This is a tinted cased ambrotype. It was probably taken avout 1860. The color of his dress was probaly blue. Studios tried to get the colors right, but the precised shades is another matter. We suspect that it may not have been such a light color. The unidentified boy look to be about 2 years old. We think he is a boy because of his hair side part.

One interesting question in fashion is color. This is an important part of fashion and thevpopularity if different colors change over time. Unfortunately identifying colors in the black and white photography of the 19th century is a virtual impossibility. And because photography made a portrait so inexpensise, we see fewer itinerate naive artists doing portraits which were done in color. They simply couldn't compete with the photograohic studios. Now these artisrs were of uneven skill. Some of the images from the early-19th century were not all that skilled. But one thing an artist could get right regardless of his skill was color. And we just do not have these naive paintings for the second half of the 19th century in any appreciable numbers. One of the major sources of color informaztion is colorized photographs. We have archived both colorized photographic portraits and the paintings which we have found which provide useful color information. Of course a colorized image is not the same as a color photograph. Some caution has to be used in assessing these colorized images. We think that the studiod did try to get the color correct, if not the precise shade. Another factor is that the tinting was usually done in light shades. Here we see a good example (figure 1). This probably does not accurately reflect the prevalence of these shades. The light shades preserve the details of the the photograph. Dark tining would cover up these details. We note many boys wearing blue dresses, but modern color conventions do not seem to be prevalent in the 19th century. We note an unidentified child, probably a boy, wearing a red dress in 1859.

Blue

We note many boys wearing blue dresses, but modern color conventions do not seem to be prevalent in the 19th century. Blue was a popular color for boys' suits and we believe the same held true for girls. Here we see a light blue summer dress (figure 1). Blue was not exclusively for boys. Girls also wore blue dresses.

Brown

Green

We believe boys also and girls wore green dresses, although we do not have many examples to confirm this. We are not aware of the prevalemce for boys or girls or the shade worn. We note a boy wearing a blue-green dress un a colorizd cabinet card about 1880. I supose this could be just as easily plced in the blue section. This is interesting because it is such a specific color. A colorist rarely saw the subects. He or she worked from basic instructions. Usually the colorists was working with just basic notations like green or blue.

Grey

Red

We note an unidentified child, probably a boy, wearing a red dress in 1859.

Created: 11:02 PM 4/27/2015
Last updated: 8:53 AM 5/5/2017