Snapshots of the Past

Portrait of the artists' mother / Allen. – Vintage Wall Art

Portrait of the artists' mother / Allen., [between 1890 and 1895] — historic photograph
Portrait of the artists' mother / Allen., [between 1890 and 1895]. Historic photograph from the Historic Print Archive collection.

(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

This rare historic photograph captures Portrait of the artists' mother / Allen. in remarkable detail. The original is held by the Library of Congress, so what you hang is a true record of its time.

Framed, it is ready for the wall; unframed, it is ready for the frame you choose. It brings character to any room and makes a memorable gift. 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.

Portrait of the artists' mother / Allen.

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Here a woman sits absorbed in knitting, a quiet domestic task that the Allen family's own camera made into a subject worth looking at. The print is a platinum print, a process prized in the 1890s for its soft tonal range and matte surface, and its back bears the imprint of F.S. & M.E. Allen of Deerfield, Massachusetts, the sisters who ran a photography studio there. Frances Benjamin Johnston, a photographer who collected pictorial work of the period, later gave it to the Library of Congress, which is why it survives in the institution's collection today.

Created / published[between 1890 and 1895]
Medium1 photographic print : platinum ; 11.4 x 16.2 cm. mounted on thick brown mat, 19.4 x 24 cm.
GenrePortrait photographs 1890-1900.Platinum prints 1890-1900.
NotesTitle from item. Signed on mount : Allen. DLC On verso: F.S. & M.E. Allen, Deerfield, Mass. DLC FBJ label no. 1. DLC Forms part of: Artistic photographs collected by Frances Benjamin Johnston in the Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection. DLC Gift; Frances Benjamin Johnston; 1948. DLC Published in: Ambassadors of progress / edited by Bronwyn A.E. Griffith ... France : Musée d'Art Américain Giverny ... 2001, p. 140.
SubjectsWomen--Domestic life--1890-1900. Knitting--1890-1900.
SourceLibrary of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Original scan1,536 × 1,182 px · prints to 5 × 4 in at 300 dpi
ReferenceAMZ-SOTP-HPA-146403

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