Unidentified Woman Holding Book, With Books on Table to Her Right – Antique Print
(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
Few images capture their era like this historic photograph of Unidentified Woman Holding Book, With Books on Table to Her Right. It comes from the collections of the Library of Congress, scanned from the original and carefully restored.
The framed print arrives ready to hang; the unframed option suits custom framing. A fine choice for anyone who loves history, and a gift that gets noticed. Free shipping in the lower 48 states. Snapshots of the Past has been bringing history to the wall since 2001, for tens of thousands of customers worldwide.
Unidentified Woman Holding Book, With Books on Table to Her Right
Order a print
Thank you. Your order went through, and a receipt is on its way by email.
Secure checkout · SSL encryptedPowered by Stripe and PayPal
Free shipping in the lower 48 states. The checkout page shows the picture, size and price before you pay.
A hand-colored sixth-plate daguerreotype, a format so small it fits in the palm, gives this portrait an intimate scale that larger studio portraits of the period rarely match. The sitter, whose name has been lost, holds a book while a stack of volumes rests on a table to her right, a pairing that signals literacy and learning as much as any caption could. Daguerreotypes of the 1840s and 1850s were prized for their mirror-like detail, and the thin layer of color added by hand, usually to cheeks, lips, and clothing, made each plate look more lifelike. The bound books in the frame also remind us how central reading was to middle-class self-presentation in the decades before the Civil War.
| Created / published | c. 1840-1860 |
|---|---|
| Medium | photograph, sixth-plate daguerreotype, hand-colored |
| Source | Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division |
| Original scan | 939 × 1,083 px |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-HPA-223417 |
More from the Books collection
Snapshots of the Past helps heritage brands, museums, historians and storytellers tell stories with history: historic prints, image licensing and historical storytelling drawn from more than 25 years of research and curation.
![Woman Reading a Book (Eloyse et Abailard)]](https://images.jameslantos.com/img/fb/fb2376a180c7-400.webp)
![Gardner's photographic sketch book of the war / A.R. Ward [i.e., Waud], del.](https://images.jameslantos.com/img/f0/f051a1941ddf-400.webp)
