Portret van een onbekende vrouw c. 1840 - 1860

This portrait of an unknown woman was made with an early photographic technique by Antoine Claudet, sometime in the mid-19th century. Photography’s emergence created something of a crisis for portrait painters, while offering a new way of representing the self. Likenesses were no longer limited to the wealthy. Small portraits like this could be kept, traded and shared. Although the sitter is unknown to us, the image still conveys social information. This woman’s dress marks her as middle-class. Her gaze is level, neither inviting nor unfriendly. As historians, we have a limited view of who this woman was. What was her social class? Where did she live? What kind of life did she lead? Answering those questions would require examining many sources beyond the image: census records, newspapers, letters, and more. What we can say, however, is that the democratization of portraiture created new ways for individuals to participate in the social life of the image.