In about 1862 Grace Bowen and her doll, both dressed in the height of fashion, traveled to the studio of a Brooklyn, New York, photographer to have their portraits made. Grace’s experience and the resulting carte de visite portrait were not at all out of the ordinary. From the beginning of the medium, photographers recognized the lucrativeness of children’s portraiture and actively marketed their services to parents.
Boston daguerreotypist S. H. Lloyd made special mention of children on a trade card from about 1860, “Particular attention given to the securing of likenesses of children, who are taken in a very few seconds….” The parents reacted positively to the permanent capture of their offspring’s childhood innocence and at the same time to the conveyance of a sense of their own well-being and comfort. Children often were depicted with their toys, which for the most part were gender-specific—boys with hoops and girls with dolls.
Historic New England holds many such examples of children’s portraits. The images on these pages span almost one hundred years—from a mid-nineteenth-century daguerreotype to a print from the 1940s. The dolls, too, provide a variety, from lady dolls to baby and child dolls. Whether the dolls in these images were beloved companions or just showpieces to be taken out on special occasions, we cannot know.
We do know that two of the dolls were cared for lovingly and later donated to Historic New England either by the original owners or by descendants. All but one of the images were made in studios. We could not resist including the one snapshot because it provides a wonderful contrast to the formal portraits.
Written by Lorna Condon, Senior Curator, Library and Archives
This article originally appeared in the Summer 2006 issue of Historic New England magazine. Check the blog monthly for new posts in our Collection Stories series.
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