MID-19TH CENTURY AMERICAN ANTIQUE OCCUPATIONAL TINTYPE OF A SEATED PAINTER, FOUND IN LOWELL, MASS.

(Circa 1865-1875)

Early photographic images of American workers

 DESCRIPTION: 

This incredible American, antique, mid-19th century occupational tintype of a New England house painter, was just recently discovered in an estate in Lowell, Massachusetts. The corners of the metal tintype were snipped and rounded previously and most likely long ago, quite possibly for the image to fit more easily and readily into a leather and velvet hinged case. The image at once transports us back to the middle of the 19th century and the seated worker wears over-sized pants with paint drops on them and with the figure nearly bursting out at the seams. He wears a hat and is bearded. His cheeks were colored in rose blush directly on the tintype itself, in order to give the appearance that the sitter was alive and 'believable.' He poses calmly for the cameras, stoically, holding a wide brush, caked with white paint across his chest, with a bucket of white paint on a stool next to him. The unmitigated humanity and clear humility on display, is an intimate portrait of a simple, working American man, trapped by the circumstances of his time and of the class he was born into and from which he can not escape. A simply extraordinary photograph of what is perhaps the most unextraordinary man. That is the measure of this image's greatness and how it clearly transcends time and reaches out and speaks to us, still to this day. Poetic. Fresh. Alive. It is the image of a ghost who once painted houses in New England some 150 years ago. Powerful and compelling.

 DIMENSIONS:

3 ¾" Height x 2 ½" Width

 CONDITION:

Good to Very Good overall antique condition.