Dating, Analysing and Explaining your Paintings and Photographs in detail
Sometimes clients are interested in finding out more about their portraits than simply establishing
a date. I am pleased to help with this by offering an extended service in the form of an in-depth
analysis (covering at least an A-4 page) of paintings and photographs. A typical report will include
a reliable circa date, a detailed discussion of the portrait type and medium, its visual setting and
the clothing worn. As far as possible, I place this within a general historical context, to give each
individual image a wider meaning. I invite clients to offer feedback afterwards and contact me again
if they have subsequent queries or thoughts concerning the image(s) in question.
The clothing worn in old family portraits is of special interest. Besides offering the most accurate
indication of the date, it demonstrates how our ancestors presented themselves to their contemporaries
and how they wished to be viewed and remembered by future generations.
In the past, a visit to the artist's or photographer's studio was often inspired by a particular event within
the family such as a christening, a 'breeching', a coming of age, a new job, a wedding, a retirement, even
death. Many of these occasions entailed the acquisition of new outfits or specialised clothes, and this accorded well
with notions of appropriate dress and looking one's best when in public. Identifying such clothing in a portrait
gives an added significance to the image and reveals something of the social status, customs and lifestyle of
past generations of a family and how dress reflected the era in which they lived.
Here are a few examples of photographs on which I have carried out a detailed analysis:
A little boy at his breeching in the 1860s proudly wears his first pair of grown-up 'trousers'
(usually knickerbockers, as here), marking his progression from infancy into boyhood.
An elderly lady wears magnificent mourning regalia from the mid-1880s, displaying
her new social status as a widow, and demonstrating that she is correctly observing contemporary etiquette
following the death of her husband.
A young couple pose before the camera in their best, most elaborate dress to celebrate the occasion
of their marriage in 1904.
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