Figure 1.--This American boy may have been painted in the Ohio Valley. He is holding a flute, suggesting it was important to either him or his mother. Note the collar and hair style. HBC does not know if this boy wears a juvenile hair style or wether adults wore this style as well. We're inclined to believe that this was a boys' hair cut. The portrait was probably painted in the 1840s.

Naive portraits provide a great deal of valuable information on hair styles. While early 19th clothing is often described in detail in a variety of publication and letters, there is much less information about hair styles. These images are particularly important as there are few photographic images until the 1850s. HBC has not yet acuired enough images to fully assess the different hair styles in the period covered by these pintings. Short hair seems the dominant style, sometimes shorter than a boy's father. There are, however, some examples of boys with longer hair. We see few portraits of boys with ringlets, perhaps because by tghe time that ringlets had become fashionable for boys photograph had supplanted the once florishing trade of unschooled primitive/naive artists.

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Created: December 30, 2000
Last updated: March 2, 2002