Figure 1.--Here we see what looks like a grandmother reading to her grandson. They are unidentified. The boy is wearing what looks like a dark collar-buttoning jacket, narrow collar, and white shortened-length pants with socks. He looks to be a about 6 years old. The portrait is undated, but based on the clothes and 1850-58 awards on the back would have been taken in 1859 or very early-60s. Notice that the convention of adding the studio to the front had not yet appeared also suggesting an early CDV. The studio was Trantoul Pere & Fils (Trantoul Father and Sons) in Toulouse.

We believe that knee pants first appeared in France during the the 1850s, but we can not yet conform that because we have no information on the 1840s yet. The CDV was also invented in France during the early-50s. It was not, however, an immediate success. Thus as popular as the CDV became, we have not yet found many examples of 1850s CDVs. We do know that early suits did not have matching jackets and pants. we do see matching suits in the 50s, but suits with different jackets and pants were still very common in the 50s. We see French boys wearing knee pants with both socks and long stockings. It is the younger boys we see wearing knee pants with socks, but in the 50s we only see younger boys weating knee pants. in the few images we have found. Boys wearing knee pants with socks is something you do not see in America where even younger boys wore knee pants with long stockings. Thus with no Dags and Ambro images and few CDVs, assessing the 50s is a real problem. We have found a few undated images that we believe to be from the late-50s or early-60s that give us some hint about decade trends, at least until we can find more verifiable 1850s images.

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Created: 6:18 PM 8/13/2016
Last updated: 6:18 PM 8/13/2016