Figure 1.--This unidentified London boy wears a tuni with a small white collar and horizontal, stock-like bow. Notice the black leather belt, pockets, and buttons. He looks to be about 5-years old. As a younger boy he wears white pantalettes rather than matching pants to make a tunic suit which older boys wore. He also seems to be wearing petticoats. This is a CDV portrait, probably dating to the 1850s. The CDV appeared in Europe during the 1850s, but did not become a real sensation until the 1860s. The portrait has been expertly colorized, even working on a multi-colored chair and brass buttons. While not a color photograph, studios generally tried to replicate the basic color, although getting the hue correct was not feasible as the colorization wa not done at the sane time the portrait was taken and tge boy was in the studio. The chair is a bit messy, but we think we can mke out a straw hat and blue streamers to match the tunic. Whether this was the colorists flair or actual conventions, we are not sure. The studio was Kilburn in London.

We have very little color information on English tunics. This of course is because we have found few paintings. The tunics worn at early grammar schools seem to have been primrily blue. And many, but not ll, of the tinics we have noted in painyings are blue., This includes one of the Bean boys (1829) and Harry Elton (1831). We have many more images with the invention of photography. but this was all black and white photography un the 19th century. We do get some colorized images, meaning black and white images with colored tint hand applied. While colorists could not produce shades or hues closely, they could get the basic colors correct. The colorized CDV here from the 1850s is a good example (figure 1). While a colorized image is not as strong evidence as a color photograph, colorists woukd not have picked outlandish color. And mothers who ordered a colorized image, generally expected them to be done in the same colors in which the boy was dressed. Most of the images were have seen show boys wearing dark colored tunic suits. We think blue was a common color. We note a painting which suggests a dark green velver tunic. We think brown and grey were also common, but this needs to be confirmed. We believe that the tunics were more likely to be boy suit colors than dress colors which could be more colorful.

Created: 5:50 AM 2/10/2015
Last updated: 5:50 AM 2/10/2015