Portrait of a Nurse and a Child
about 1850
- Medium
- Daguerreotype
- Dimensions
- 6.2 × 4.8 cm
- Status
- In Museum Collection
- Collect24 Art ID
- C24-523972
The woman's large hand firmly holds the frightened-looking child, a necessary gesture in early photography, when exposure times were usually too long for a child to sit still. The woman looks directly at the camera, asserting her presence as more than merely a prop to hold and control her charge during the exposure. This daguerreotype was made about thirteen years prior to emancipation, so the woman holding the child was probably a slave. The black female domestic caretaker, commonly referred to as a "mammy," was frequently depicted in early photographic representations. The scarf-wearing black mammy caring for a white child also became a standard, romanticized icon of servitude in post-Civil War America.
Provenance
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Registry history
- about 1850 — Recorded in the collection of J. Paul Getty Museum — photographs
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