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This sixth plate portrait shows a boy wearing a military-styled collar-buttoning probably blue jacket. He is wearing contrasting pants with a loud pattern. The portrait shows brass buttons, a gold gilded riding crop, gold gilded books, and a wide-brimmed hat. It is a sixth plate Dag. The dealer believes the portrait was taken in the late-1840s. The case had a farmer's dream\child in a dream case cover. It was a union case with the other side containing a Dag of mother. No doubt it was a cased Dag lovingly carried by their father and husband.
This sixth plate portrait shows a boy wearing a military-styled collar-buttoning probably blue jacket. As with most Dags, His name is unknown. He is wearing contrasting pants with a loud pattern. It is an outfit tat a farm boy could have worn when dressing up. The portrait shows brass buttons, a gold gilded riding crop, gold gilded books, and a wide-brimmed hat. There are few clues about he boy's life. An exception may have been his hat. It looks to us more like a hat a rural boy would wear than a city. The hair style with hair covering much of his ears was fairly standard.
America was still a very rural country in the 1840s. Most Americans were farm families. Nealy 90 percent of Americans still lived in rural areas. Thus it is likely that the boy came from a farm family. The union case includes a portrait of mother. The portrait of his mother shows a fashionable woman with gold jewelry. The gold is highlighted by he studio. Her hair is very carefully done. She does not look like a farm woman, although like most Americans, she probably had farming origins.
The dealer believes the portrait was taken in the late-1840s. We have trouble discriminating between 1840s and 50s Dags. Unlike many dealers selling old photographs. It is our understanding that those specializing in Dags and Ambros tend to have a greater understanding of the the portraits that they are selling. Thus we tend to think he is right about the dating, although we think the early-50s is likely. This of course would be within the approximate time frame of the late-40s. This would be about the time just after the Mexican War (1846-48). The collar buttoning jacket the boy wears was probably blue and essentially the same as the U.S. Army uniform at the time.
The young United States had a serious economic problem. There was a shortage of specie (gold and silver). This was the currency of the day and the basis of early American monetary policy. A shortage of gold and silver, however, limited business activity. And to make matters worse there was no national paper currency. State banks issued paper currency, but they were not reliable and not widely accepted, especially if the bank was not local. All his was about to change. Shortly after the Mexican War (1846-48), the United States acquired California where gold was discovered (1848) leading to the California Gold Rush (1849). This significantly added to America's gold supply. The Comstock Load, a silver find in Nevada created a needed supply of silver (1859). It was not until the Civil War (1861-65) that the greenbacks, Federal paper currency, were issued. We see some of this plat out in Dags and Ambros. Notice how guiding is highlighted in the boy's portrait. This s even more notable in mother's portrait.
American Dags and Ambros were normally cased. The cases for some reasons were much less common in Europe. The cases allowed people to carry them on their person. The cases were wood covered in various ways, at fist with tooled leather and then with tooled leather and then with gutta-percha, a rubbery thermomplastic (1854). The gutta-perca made elaborate decorative desifns possible. There were many different designs which can help date the images. The case here had a farmer's dream\child in a dream case guta-percha cover. It is described as "The depiction of an infant perched in an apple tree, wearing a straw hat, and holding a stein with one hand and a scythe with the other is completely incongruous to the otherwise realistic barnyard setting. The shield-like center design only serves to prevent us from seeing the farmyard more clearly. The presence of the infant and shield can be explained in terms of a fantasy or dreamscape." The portraits seem to have been taken earlier and than recased with new mats and gutta-perca cover. It was a union case with the other side contained a Dag of mother. No doubt it was a cased Dag lovingly carried by their father and husband. The choice of gutta-perca designs suggests that this was a farm family or a successful city family with farm background.
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