Figure 1.-- Here we have an unattributed naive portrait. We do not know the artist or family. Naive artists often do not getv age right, but the garment are depicted to a tee. We suspect the ages range from 5 to 13 yeras based primarily on biology. (sibkings are unlikelt to br clkiser together thn 1 1/2 years. The two boys are probably not as close im age as suggrsted. The younger boy wears a green patterned dress dress with a ruffled collar. The older boy wears a suit with a short collat-buttoned jacket and striped pants. The girl wears a white dress with a low neckline, puffed sleeves and pink sash. The portrait is not obvviously dated. One art historin suggests 1825, but there is a '39' notation in the book. That may mot be a date, but it likekly is. Click here to see the notation.

We believe that the sleleton suits popular in the early-19th century were going out of style. The button-on jackets were declining in popularity. We see entirely sepatate short jackets (figure 1). We also notice frock suits and long jackets which would have been worn by older teenagers and adults, but probably not very commonly for boys. They were most likely to wear the short jackets. We are not entire sure about the collars and lapels as we have so few images. And in some cases the top of the jacket is covered with large lace or ruffled collars. A destinctive popular style was a shirt jacket with long tails. Some of the tails expanded on to the front like the suit the boy on the previous page is wearing. For adults they closed becoming frock coats. For boys they were most liklely to be kept open. Almost closed they had a skirt like appearance.

Created: 6:17 PM 11/28/2020
Last updated: 6:17 PM 11/28/2020