Figure 1.--Here we see an unidentified American boy wearing a pleated dress. He looks to be avout 4-years old. We would date the portrait to the 1870s. we think in the 1870s. We are not yet capable of dating the dress, but the mount suggests the 1870s. The large collar we think suggests the late-70s, but the early-80s is possible. Boys' shirt/blouse collars tended to be small in the 1870s, only a lttle larger than the 60s. We are, however, less sure about collars on dresses. The nicely colorized image epicts a blue-green dress with black velvet trim. we believe that suggest a specific color (not a generic blue or green) suggests strongly that it was acurately colorized. There is no attempt to colorize the stockings or high-top button shoes. The studio was Markham and Johnson in fashionable Brooklyn, New York.

We believe boys also and girls wore green dresses, although we do not have many examples to confirm this. We are not aware of the prevalemce for boys or girls or the shade worn. We note a boy wearing a blue-green dress in a colorizd cabinet card about 1875-80 or so, although we are only guessing. We do not know enough yet to date the dress, but the mount suggests the 1870s. Large collars worn with suits are more associated with the 80s, but dress collars we are less sure about. We have placed this blue-green dress in he green section, but we supose it could have been plced in the blue section. But it seems to us it is closer to a forrest green than a drk blue. What is interesting is such aoecifuc shde is depicted. This is interesting because it is such a specific color. A colorist rarely saw the subects. He or she worked from basic instructions. Usually the colorists was working with just basic notations like green or blue and generic colots were commonly used in colorized images. .

Created: 6:10 PM 5/5/2017
Last updated: 6:10 PM 5/5/2017