[African American woman holding a white child] – Historic Reproduction
![[African American woman holding a white child], [ca. 1855] — historic photograph](https://images.jameslantos.com/img/00/00ce2a2a5610-L.webp)
(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)
Description
A window into the past: [African American woman holding a white child], preserved in this historic photograph. The original is held by the Library of Congress, so what you hang is a true record of its time.
The framed print arrives ready to hang; the unframed option suits custom framing. Perfect for a home, office, library or classroom wall, and a gift with a story behind it. Free shipping in the lower 48 states. Since 2001, Snapshots of the Past has shipped historic prints to tens of thousands of customers around the world.
[African American woman holding a white child]
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A sixth-plate ruby ambrotype, hand-colored around 1855, this image shows a Black woman holding a white child. Ambrotypes were inexpensive glass-plate portraits that were popular in the decade before the Civil War, and the red glass backing and hand tinting gave them their distinctive glow. The Library of Congress records the sitters only by description, and Robert Coles later published the picture as "Nursemaid with her charge" in *When They Were Young*. That caption points to a common domestic role of the period, but the record does not name either sitter, so the relationship between them remains unknown.
| Created / published | [ca. 1855] |
|---|---|
| Medium | 1 photograph : ruby ambrotype, sixth-plate, hand-colored. |
| Genre | c2002 |
| Notes | Rinhart, no. 119 Published as Nursemaid with her charge" in When they were young : a photographic retrospective of childhood from the Library of Congress / Robert Coles. Carlsbad |
| Subjects | African Americans--Women--1850-1860. Children--1850-1860. |
| Source | Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division |
| Original scan | 3,289 × 4,096 px · prints to 11 × 14 in at 300 dpi |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-HPA-219070 |
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