Wonderfully Handtinted Sixth Plate Dag of a Little Girl

ONLY . . . A daguerreian’s daughter’s daguerreotype done in sixth plate size that arrived to me with the original seals still intact would receive the ultimate in painted palette treatment as presented to all of us in this archivally taped masterpiece. Folks, those curtains were not really in the original image. The man or woman with a broad range of pigments and a wild imagination went to work with a very deft hand and created a dreamy aura around an adorable little girl who was posed with her favorite small purse resting in her lap. The string wrapped round her wrist insured that the fringed bag remained in place. Many of you know that I have a substantial collection of tinted children alone, with siblings or their parents. The gal’s sensational silvered mirror shines brightest above all the rest. I should mention the very rare hallmark, “20” (that means much more silver was clad to the copper then in the usual “40” plates). There was also a hexamerous design commonly seen on plate circa 1846-1850. I believe this child was taken circa 1848-1850. The leather case that came with the dag was extremely worn and broken at the spine. There was no absolute proof that likeness and case went together so I have placed the magnificent remembrance in a mother of pearl case of the correct period. Also, the sides of the plate were flat and the four corners were rounded unequally. I was intrigued by the black object someone had placed on the low stand on the left. Even when the mat was off, it remained indefinable. Naturally the child’s dag strongly resembles the great canvases of folk art paintings. Could the colorist have been influenced by that mode of artistic expression or was this example simply something that evolved. The delicacy of the work coupled with the bold brush strokes is really remarkable. After writing this description when I purchased the adorable gal, three more sixth plate dags surfaced. One was a variant of the child and the others were double portraits most likely of her parents. A private collector retains the trio. He mentioned that the mat style is the same on all the portraits.