Two in One, One in Two

 

The violin is a difficult instrument,
so it is best to start lessons at an early age.

Though the instrument is not complicated,
just a bow and a box with four strings,
it still requires nimble fingers
and agile coordination.

Yet to play a violin well
the most important aptitude
for a child to have
is a good ear.

Though some children may have a natural gift for music,
most just need patience and discipline
to build their musical skills
and attain proficiency
on their instrument.

Today I present a collection
of portraits of young violinists.
All whose names are unknown
but who undoubtedly
had very proud parents.

My first violinist is a boy seated with his violin in the studio of D. Mendelsohn of Berlin, Germany. He is dressed in a fine three-piece suit with short trousers and looks about age 10-12. Across his vest is a watch chain and fob which is an unusual accessory to see on such a small boy. A sign perhaps that he comes from a well-to-do family. But it is his calm direct gaze into the camera lens that really caught my attention. 

In this second carte de visite photo the boy is standing in front of a painted garden scene at the same studio of the photographer, D. Mendelsohn. The address on the photographer's backstamp is 119 Brunnen Str. in Berlin. I've been unable to find much information on this studio but I did find one example of Mendelsohn's work dated 1897 but at 155 Brunnen Straße, and another where the number 119 was crossed out and replaced with 155. So it seems fair to say this boy's photo was taken at least some time before 1897.

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My second young violinist is a girl from Wales. In this carte de visite she is seated in the studio of E. Lott of Nolton Studio, Bridgend which is a town in Wales about 20 miles west of Cardiff and 20 miles east of Swansea. Its name is derived from a medieval bridge over the River Ogmore. 

The photographer's full name is Edwin Lott and he worked in Bridgend from 1875 to 1920. The style of this cdv is probably from the 1890s. At the same sitting the photographer made a second larger print for a cabinet card mount. The girl's layered frock and long stockings suggest her age is 12-14 years old. The circular thing in her hair is not a blemish but a small brooch of tiny clear gems set around a dark colored stone. 

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My third and fourth violinists are two boys who chose have their photo taken at the same place, perhaps as school pictures. Both are dressed in identical suits with short pants, and are of a similar age, perhaps 11-12, though they are too dissimilar, I think, to be brothers. The first boy has a doltish expression of a child out of phase with the world. In contrast, the second boy has a much brighter face full of self-awareness and maturity. I wonder who was the better musician.

The photographer for the two cabinet card photos was Walter E. Chickering of Boston, Massachusetts at 627 Washington St. In my recent story, Even More Fashionable Lady Cornetists, I featured a photo of a beautiful cornet player that was taken by his brother, Elmer Chickering (1857–1915). The brothers may or may not have collaborated in business but evidently Walter considered himself the "ORIGINAL" photographer of that name, as noted in the backstamp printed on these photos. 

Walter E. Chickering died in November 1905 at the Boston Insane Hospital at age 50. According to a brief entry on Find-a-Grave.com the cause of death was "Exhaustion in Terminal Dementia". The entry also reports that in 1892 he tried to evade creditors by moving to Canada and was accused of swindling people in Concord, New Hampshire of $1,000 taking advance payments for photographs he failed to deliver. The Boston city directory listed Walter Chickering under Photographers beginning in the 1883 directory. Elmer joined the list in 1886 and the brothers continued to have their separate businesses listed until the 1890 directory, but Walter disappears from the 1892 edition. That means these two young violinists' photos were probably produced in  the late 1880s but no later than 1890.

This backstamp is from the second boy's photo and it has his name, Ernest, written twice at the bottom. 

* * *

In about the same decade, two boys in Germany also posed with their violins. Each stands in the same exact spot next to a cloth covered table in the studio of Atlier  Emil Schröter of Breite-Str. 32 in Spandau, a western suburb of Berlin. 

Like the Boston boys, these young fellows look to be about 12-14 years old. They are not brothers, I think, as one boy wears a different houndstooth suit with long trousers. My hunch is that both were members of a school orchestra that arranged to have individual portraits made.

 

These small carte de visite photos have beautiful clarity, which is not surprising considering Germany was the center for camera technology in the 19th century. This kind of quality is typical of the late 1890s. In looking up the photographer Emil Schröter I found a similar example of his work dated 1901 from a second studio in Potsdam.  The printed backstamp of these photos has another name, C. Bläsing, which may be Schröter's associate in Spandau. The design is more modern than the other photos I've featured which suggests it dates to the 1900s. 

CODA

As I was preparing this story yesterday and doing my usual due diligence research I discovered another photograph from D. Mendelsohn of a family group of father, mother, and two sons. The youngest boy is my violinist! This photo was taken perhaps a couple of years before the boy's portraits were made. I have now purchased this photo and though I do not know his name I can at least reunite him with his loving parents and brother. (The image is the dealer's scan and I will replace it once I receive the original photo.) By strange coincidence both of his pictures with a violin came from two other different dealers. That's spooky. 

To finish this post with some music here is a short British Pathé newsreel film from 1948 of Australian radio commentator Dick Fair speaking with Ian McDonough, an 8-year-old musical prodigy from Victoria who played the violin, piano, clarinet, organ and tin whistle. I suspect this talented boy is the same person as an Australian violinist with the same name who played with the London Symphony Orchestra for many years.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where sometime a good photo doesn't need a story
to catch your attention.

The Art of War - Portraits of Soldiers

In August 1914 as armies across Europe mobilized for war, military commands gave little thought to the consequences of a prolonged conflict. Almost everyone believed that this war would last only a few weeks, certainly no more than a month of two. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie by a half-dozen Bosnia-Serb terrorists on 28 June 1914 was a terrible tragedy, but it seemed unthinkable that diplomacy would fail and nations would be forced into war.

Yet only a month later hundreds of thousands of soldiers were engaged in ferocious combat across tremendous battlelines drawn across both western and eastern Europe. 

The empires of Germany and Austria-Hungary, as well as Russia and the Ottoman empires, were much larger in 1914 than these nations are in the 21st century. As Austria-Hungary embarked on a Serbian campaign on 28 July 1914, it triggered a complicated series of military agreements that compelled Russia and then Germany to deploy their armies, closely followed by Belgium, France, and Britain. In the first weeks of the war Germany took advantage of its military planning and completely overwhelmed the small Belgian army as German forces marched to attack France. Thousands of Belgian soldiers were taken prisoner.

On the Eastern Front at the Battle of Tannenberg, General Paul von Hindenburg's troops effectively destroyed the Russian 2nd Army in just seven days at the end of August 1914. The German victory resulted in the capture of 92,000 Russian soldiers, including 13 generals.

But for Germany, these early victories came at a cost. Tens of thousands of Belgian and Russian soldiers were captured. As the war stretched into September more French and British soldiers were taken too. As enemy soldiers, of course, they could not be released. So Germany was compelled to hurriedly construct camps to hold its prisoners of war. 

By February 1915 Germany had imprisoned 652,000 enemy soldiers and by August that number increased to 1,045,232. Hundreds of camps were established throughout Germany with separate facilities for officers and enlisted men. Later the camps were further divided by nationalities. In August 1916 the POW population in Germany had grown to 1,625,000 soldiers and it would expand to an astounding 2,415,000 prisoners by the end of the war in November 1918. Though there were German prisoners of war held in Russia, France, and Britain, it was the POW camps in Germany that confined the most soldiers from August 1914 to November 1918. 

The numbers of the Great War are staggering to understand, especially when combined with the horrible casualties and deaths incurred by all the armed forces. As each nation realized that this war would be horribly different, governments created new departments of propaganda. Germany was especially effective in using picture postcards, a popular medium of communication, to persuade its citizens that this war was a just and righteous struggle against ignoble and villainous foreign people.  

A few years ago I began collecting postcards that depicted captive soldiers from both sides of the war. These postcards are typically black and white photographs, sometimes colorized, of ranks of enemy troops usually marching through city streets or assembled for transport to confinement camps. Readers can see examples of these cards in my story The Color of War from November 2022.

But my collecting interest was also attracted to a very different kind of German postcard from the war that did not show captive soldiers as unsympathetic masses of enemy troops. These were sensitive portraits of individual soldiers  painted or sketched by accomplished artists and then published by respectable German publishing companies. Unlike other postcards of POWs these were not caricatures or cartoons that emphasized racist stereotypes or tried to incite bellicose hatred. These fine art portraits expressed an unusual respectful view of an individual soldier without any blatant bias. Many of the pictures are dated and sometimes identified their subjects or their military units. This collection represents the work of four different artists which I feature today..

My first artist is the one who painted the colorful soldier at the top of my story. This man is dressed in the colors of a French soldier's uniform with blue jacket and red pantaloons tucked into high cavalry boots. The artist's signature is A. Bitterlich.

The back of the card has a caption identifying the figure as an Afrikanischer Jäger zu Pferd (Wachtmeister) ~ African hunter (ranger) on horseback (sergeant). It is from a series of cards entitled: Studien aus den Gefangenen-Lagern ~ Studies from the prison camps, produced by the GMT printing company with militäramtlich genehmigt ~ officially approved by the military. 

The card was addressed to Madame & Monsieur Dupuis of Montmirey-le-Château a small commune in the Jura department of eastern France. In 1911 its population was 271. The card was dated 25 June 1917 and signed with a single name that I can't quite make out. 

This second watercolor by Bitterlich shows another French soldier, called an Infanterist or infantryman in the card's caption. This man is wounded with his left arm and hand bandaged and in a sling under his great coat. The colors of uniforms are, of course, absent in a black and white photo but here the artist gives us the accurate hues worn by French soldiers who began the war in gallant blue coats and cardinal red caps and trousers. However this brilliant fashion may have suited 19th century warfare but in early 1914 the French military command realized that the red and blue made their soldiers easy targets for the enemy. In July 1914 a new uniform was ordered in a blue-grey color known as "horizon-blue" as this tint was considered a better color to mask a soldier's outline against the sky.  However the war began before most mobilized units could receive the new uniforms. Therefore this soldier was clearly captured during the first weeks of the conflict.

The artist's full name was Albert Bitterlich who was a German painter and printmaker born in Bräunsdorf, Saxony, Germany in 1871. He studied at art schools in Dresden and in Munich which became his residence before the war. Some of his artwork is preserved in the State Painting Collection of Munich. Albert Bitterlich died in 1960 in Newuberg, Germany. 

This third image by Bitterlich is called simply Tartar and it shows a Russian soldier reclining on the ground. The man wears a blue peasant shirt and a tall fur hat that has no brim. He looks resigned to his fate. 

This card, like the previous two, was also addressed to Madame & Monsieur Dupuis of Montmirey-le-Château and  signed by the same soldier. This one is dated 15 May 1917 so I presume it was sent to France from a German POW camp. 

Some of Bitterlich's paintings can be seen at ArtNet. It's a small collection of a few bucolic landscapes and some charming flower arrangements, but I think these cards are far more interesting for both their subjects and his impressionist style.

* * *

My second artist used a different technique to create quickly sketched portraits in shades of black and grey. I think the medium is charcoal or pastel crayons, but it may be a brushed ink. This postcard shows a Russian soldier with the artist's signature, Erich Lüdke, very clear in the lower corner. Also with the signature is Biała 1915, Belin in block letters and another line in cursive which is unclear. Biala was part of the twin cities now known as Bielsko-Biała in southern Poland near the borders of Slovakia and the Czech Republic. In 1914 it was within the crownland of Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Several battles between the Russian and Austrian-Hungarian armies were fought in this area.

The back of this card has one of the most unusual handwriting styles I've ever encountered. I believe the long message is in German and written by a soldier, but the spiky penmanship is too dense to make out words. The only thing I can decipher is the date 24 III 17. 

Tracking down this artist was not easy, partly because the name is shared with Erich Lüdke (1882–1946) a German general who served in both WW1 and WW2. At first I wanted this career army officer to have a side talent as an artist because ironically at the end of WW2 he was captured by the Soviet Union and died in a  Russian prison in 1946. However I found other commercial artwork by a Erich Lüdke with the same signature that leads me to believe the artist was a different man. This next German poster has his block letter signature and it dates from 1924/25. I also found examples of illustrations for advertisement posters for cigarettes and coffee that date to the postwar years. 

2ter Deutscher Hanfa-Tag Poster
by Erich Lüdke, c1925
Source: Postermuseum

I could not find any other information about Erich Lüdke, but I suspect he was Austrian, either a soldier fighting in Galicia or an artist commissioned to draw pictures of Russian prisoners of war since all of his postcards were used by Austrian soldiers. 

I'm trying a new method to display a gallery of images on my blog. It's a Google Slideshow document which I hope will work for all viewers, but with all the privacy blockers around it may not display for everyone. Please leave a comment if you are unable to see this collection of 3 other soldiers' portraits by Erich Lüdke.

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* * *

My third artist also worked in charcoal pencil to sketch many portraits of captured soldiers. This example shows a proud Russian in a heavy coat, fur cap and with a very insulating beard. A printed caption identifies him simply as a Sibirier ~ Siberian with his full name, Lesow Kaluga. The third photo at the beginning of my story is by the same artist and has a similar caption and name: Buddist ~ Buddhist Jwan Leiduhoff, Sib. Inf._Reg. No. 26.  

The artist signed the pictures as M. Tilke  and added a date underneath of Dec.14 for the Siberian Kaluga, and Jan. 15 for the Buddhist Leiduhoff, the numeral standing as the year. Tilke also added a written note of Nach dem Leben gezeichnet ~ Drawn from life. So I think these were soldiers that he met personally and who sat for him as he made his sketch. 

The first Tilke card was never mailed, but this second one was sent using the German civil postal service but the postmark is smudged. However the writer properly dated it 16. 8. 15. 

The artist's full name was Max Karl Tilke (1869–1942), and he was born in 1869 in Breslau which was then in Prussian Silesia but is now known as  Wrocław, Poland. He was only age 17 when he entered the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin and traveled to France and Italy as a young man. In 1901 Tilke opened the first cabaret in Berlin called "The Hungry Pegasus" ~ "Zum hungrigen Pegasus" where he acted as the Conferencier  or master of ceremonies. 

Tilke had a wide range of artistic interests and earned a reputation for his knowledge of historical and oriental costume. In 1912 at the invitation of the Tsar, he traveled to Tbilisi, Georgia to work at the Caucasus Museum painting the costumes in the museum's collections and undertaking expedition to find more ethnic folk costumes. But the onset of the war in August  1914 prevented him from ever completing his research. On his return to Germany Tilke worked for the publishing union, Deutsche Verlag Union, in Stuttgart and produced other paintings on themes of the war. In the 1920s he returned to his study of Oriental and folk costumes and published several works on this topic. 

Max Tilke produced several postcard series of prisoner of war portraits. Almost all with individual names, dates, and sometimes units. It is easy to see how his interest in folk costumes influenced his choice of subjects. I imagine his sketchbooks were filled with hundreds of soldiers from across Eastern Europe and the Russian Empire. Here is a second slideshow of six more of Tilke's portraits.

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* * *

My fourth artist used both charcoal pencil and watercolors and is arguably the most prolific of this quartet of wartime artists. In this sketch we see a bearded French soldier in profile. A caption identifies him as a Französ. Landsturm ~ French militia (reserve) in the 45th regt. of infantry from his collar badge. The artist has signed it: Günkel 1914. 

His previous work at the top of my story was in color and shows a Belgian cavalryman of the 1st regiment of Guides in Brussels. That portrait has a signature of E. Gunkel.

The French soldier's card was sent by a German soldier using the military post on 2 October 1915 from Arlon, Belgium in the southern region just next to Luxemburg.  

The artist's full name was Ernst Günkel (1876–1925). His German Wikipedia entry offers very little except to say he was a German painter "who was best known for his colored portrait drawings, which were published as war souvenir cards by Dr. Trenkler & Co., Leipzig." By a strange coincidence the only image file included on his Wikipedia page is a slightly different version of this same French soldier.

 

Artwork of Ernst Günkel (1876–1925)
Source: de.wikipedia.org

Ernst Günkel's prisoner of war portraits were evidently very popular during the war years as I have found many of his postcards. Like Bitterlich, Lüdke, and Tilke, Günkel painted numerous portraits of Russian soldiers but he was also attracted to the various French-African colonial soldiers who were brought to work and fight on the Western Front. His depiction of Black Africans from Sudan and Sengal as well as swarthy "Turkos" from Algeria and Morocco took a very sympathetic, even fraternal, approach to men whose race was considered exotic to most Germans. 

Printed om the back of many of the cards is a title: Kriegs-Erinnerungs-Karte ~ War memorial card. Some were distributed in aid of the German Red Cross. In several portraits the prisoner of war camp is also identified with the soldier. Günkel's signature on the charcoal sketches almost always has the year 1914, so I believe these soldiers were among the first taken prisoner in the war. Based on some of the postmarks, these cards were published throughout the war years, a testimony to the popularity of Günkel's artwork. 

This last slideshow shows twenty of Günkel's portraits in my collection. 

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A century later it is difficult to interpret how these portraits of enemy soldiers were perceived by Germans during the war. No doubt many Germans found the unusual uniforms, hats, and complexions a novel curiosity. Perhaps the postcard publisher's intent was to humanize the enemy as a subtle way to check anti-war sentiments in the German public and encourage benevolent feelings toward enemy peoples. But only so long as they were pictures of vanquished soldiers who were incarcerated in prison camps. 

What most intrigues me is that Günkel, Tilke, Lüdke, and Bitterlich used their artistic talent in a way that transcends any fake disinformation or jingoistic bluster. These were artists who painted what they saw: real men whose faces reveal pride, anxiety, and even suffering. These were soldiers removed from the horrors of battle but now confined indefinitely to a prison camp. It was a fate that in 1914-15 seemed to have no end.  

 

There is one more question about these portraits that may never be answered. Did these soldiers ever receive a postcard of their sketch or painting that they could send to the folks back in their homeland? I'd like to believe the artists found a way to give each of the men a personally signed picture.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where great grandpa is always watching what you do. 

Four Pairs of Zithers

 

Brothers?
Cousins?
Friends?
Sadly, many portraits
of pairs of young men
do not tell us.

But when they include musical instruments
the relationship at least discloses a shared interest
between two fellow musicians.

And when the instrument is unusual
it often connects the players to a common culture.

And even in a less sophisticated portrait
a musical instrument can reveal
a more lighthearted personality
than a formal photo could.

 

Today I present
four pairs of zither players.

Mostly.

My first pair are two serious young men who face the camera at Jacks Studio at 136 Bowery, in New York City. They are dressed in their best suits and have two concert zithers displayed upright at their feet. Their zithers have ribbons tied to the tuning peg side, a decorative feature which suggests they have just come from a performance. The young man standing is marked with an X and has conveniently left his name and date on the back of this cabinet card photograph.

In ink is written: Compliments of FredK Orphal, 1895. Another notation in a different hand reads; Al & Elinor's father. Fred's full name was Gottlieb Frederick Orphal and he was born in Germany in 1874. According to the 1920 census, Fred immigrated to the United States in 1881 and became a citizen in 1887. In 1920 Frederick Orphal lived in Brooklyn with his wife Louise and daughter Elinor, age 21, and son Alfred, 18. Fred's occupation was Manager, Roofer.

* * *

My second pair of sober young men are also from New York, sitting in the Gardiner Art Studio at 461 Fifth Ave. corner of 10th St. in Brooklyn, N. Y. Only one man has a zither while the other holds a mandolin. Unfortunately there is no note to identify them but I think their clothing and the style of the cabinet card date this duo to around 1895-1899.

A Zither is a string instrument with many metal strings stretched over a flat wooden box and played by plucking  or strumming. There are many cultures around the world that have zither-like instruments, but the ones pictured in my photos today are concert zithers developed in Bavaria and Austria in the early 19th century. They have between 29 to 38 strings with four or five melody strings fixed above a chromatic fretboard that is similar to a guitar.  

Perhaps the best way to explain a zither 
is to hear the music of two played together.
Here is Elfi Gach & Maria Ledinek
performing "Der Badewaschl".

* * *

My third duo are from München, Germany. This is a smaller carte de visite photo with two young men posed like the men in the first photo, one standing and the other seated. But the man on the right is wearing dark glasses, an accessory used by blind people to distract attention from their eyes. 

The photographer was Joseph Werner whose studio was located in München at Zweibrückenstrasse 2.

* * *

My last portrait of a pair of musicians is on a German postcard. With a comical "Mutt & Jeff" difference, a short man plays a zither placed on his lap while his taller companion holds a crude folk string instrument made out of a cigar box. It seems to have four strings and a bow like a violin but he holds it between his knees so it may be played like a cello. They are both dressed in nice  suits but someone has mischievously drawn a Prussian mustache under the tall fellow's nose. 

The card was sent from Freiburg on 6 August 1903 by a soldier using the German free military post. The message and signature is too messy for me to decipher, but I assume, even though it went by military post, that it was written by one or maybe both of the two men pictured in civilian attire. However it's interesting that it was sent to Herrn Hermann Heüer, a Hoboist or Haut-oboist of an infantry regiment in Freiburg. A Hoboist was a military rank in a German military band that was equivalent to a chief musician or staff sergeant. No doubt Hermann got a laugh from their little joke.  

In conclusion here is some more zither music
from a Tyrolean ensemble of three zithers and a guitar
playing  "Für'n Phil", a waltz by Dominik Meißnitzer.
The musicians are Anton Mooslechner, Dominik Meißnitzer,
Kathrin Matzenberger, and Markus Brodinger.
It may be a recent composition but I think 
it demonstrates why the beautiful sound of a zither
remains popular with the people of Germany and Austria.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where sometimes two is better than one.

Even More Fashionable Lady Cornetists

 

In the early days of photography
there were no candid snapshots.
A photograph was the result of a formal event
conducted at a photographer's studio.

Taking a photo was never done
on a spontaneous impulse.
It was always scheduled 
with a photographer in advance
and the client was expected to look their best.

The photographer used their artistic judgement
to place the camera in a position
that presented their subjects
in the most flattering light.

For photos of young women it was very important
to have an undistracting background
with gentle side illumination to avoid shadows on the face
or any glare reflected in the eyes. 

And sometimes when the occasion allowed
a skilled photographer might invite
their subject to look into the camera lens
and smile.

Today I present five beautiful portraits
of young women from New England,
all cornet players from the 1890s
and all, unfortunately, missing any identification.

My first young cornetist sits in the Holden studio of 393 Main St. in Worcester, Massachusetts. She is wearing a dark satin gown with puffy shoulders and a very tight waistline as she reclines on a velvet covered box. She has a pleasant wistful look as she gazes off to the left. Her B-flat cornet is embellished with a lot of engraving, the sign of a premium instrument. 

The photographer was Luman Holden who was born in 1865 in Massachusetts. In the 1900 census he was married to Addie Holden and his occupation was photographer. But the earliest date I could find for his photography studio in Worcester was around 1897. By 1902 his name was missing from the city directory and in the 1910 census he worked as a foreman in a shoe shop.

The second young lady's portrait is a ¾ view in an oval cut print. She is standing in the Haley & Akers Studio of  Meriden, Connecticut. Dressed in a dark striped blouse with modest puffy shoulders and a slim dark skirt, I'd put her age at around 17-20 years old, but I find it hard to be sure when a young girl is so elegantly dressed.

The photographers were John P. Haley and John Akers. Their studio first appears in the 1894 Meriden city directory but by 1901, Haley has left and only Akers remains in the photographers listings. 

My third cornetist is actually performing for the camera with her cornet at her lips. However I think it is only a pose as her embouchure would show some tension around her mouth if she was actually blowing a note. Her gown is all white with a ruffle band along the front button seam. Like the previous women she also has a very tight waistline. 

The photographer was the Partridge Studio of Boston, Massachusetts in Brookline. The back of the cabinet card photograph has a nice illustration of the studio building showing a kind of Arts & Craft style cottage with a fanciful tower on one corner. Perhaps the many windows on the circular tower was a way to insure good lighting throughout the day. 

The photographer William H. Partridge (1858–1938) was born in Wheeling, West Virginia to a father who was a photographer. William and his two brothers, Edward and Samuel Partridge, all took up photography too, and began working with their father in Boston in 1878 as A. C. Partridge & Sons. In 1884 Edward and William moved to Portland, Oregon where they established a successful studio there. They both made several trips to Alaska and made a number of landscape photos that were printed for sale on both the west and east coasts. In about 1887 William Partridge moved back to Boston where he ran a successful photography studio until 1914 and became known for his portrait and landscape photographs as well as botanical paintings. My collection has several fine portraits of female musicians including some string players that were taken at the Partridge studio, so I believe they all may be connected to the same Boston women's orchestra. 

The fourth cornetist is similarly dressed in a white gown with puffy sleeves. She looks the youngest of my set of young ladies, maybe 15-17 years old. The photographer has posed her standing in front of a vague cloud-like backdrop which give her an angelic attitude.  This picture was taken by Chipman & Keefe of the Temple Studio at 180 Temple St. in New Haven, Connecticut. 

The photographers were Walter F. Chipman and William J. O'Keefe. Chipman was born in 1863 and when he was 17 he listed his occupation as photographer in the 1880 census for New Haven. However his partnership with O'Keefe on Temple St. began with a listing in the 1894 New Haven city directory. This business only lasted two years as in the 1896 directory O'Keefe has the studio  at Temple. The following year, in 1897, O'Keef has departed and Chipman has a new partner named Beck with a studio on Chapel St.. And in 1898 New Haven has 25 photographers in its business listings but neither Chipman nor O'Keefe have a studio, though they each list their occupation as photographer in their individual listings. It's an example how photography became a booming field for entrepreneurs in the late 1890s but it was also a very competitive trade. It does mean that this young woman's portrait dates from the years 1894 to 1895 that Chipman and O-Keefe worked together.

My last cornetist has the most glamorous photo. This young lady is also dressed in a white satin gown with full puffy shoulders, ruffles, ribbons and a super tight waist. She is the only one who gazes directly at the camera lens with a very slight but confident smile. Her curly hair is tied with a ribbon into a topknot. In this ¾ view she is seated on an ornately carved wooden chair with her arm around her instrument that rests oddly on a wooly sheepskin. 

The photo was taken at another Boston photography studio operated by Elmer Chickering of 21 West St. in Boston. Elmer Chickering (1857–1915) was born in Vermont where he learned photography but in 1884 relocated to Boston opening a studio on West St. just a half-block from Boston Common park. His establishment had a first floor gallery that was arranged like a museum exhibition space. On the third floor his studio was outfitted with the best cameras including one of the earliest telephoto lens. Chickering was also skilled in several graphic techniques, being a good painter in oils, and an accomplished draughtsmen with crayons, pastels, and India ink. His studio employed several photographers with specialties in arranging photographs of artistic, landscape, and outdoor scenes. Chickering's handsome photo portraits became very popular and attracted a large clientele, especially with theatric entertainers, who purchased multiple cabinet card promotional prints.  

Like the Partridge studio, Chickering produced a large number of photos of Boston's female musicians, some of which are now in my collection. Like this young cornetist, almost every one is dressed in a white gown with big puffy sleeves, a fashion popular in the late 1890s. A few of these musicians are identified on the photo and I've been able to find them on the player rosters of several Boston ladies' orchestras from the 1890s. Because Boston was such an important center of American culture and entertainment in this era, it provided female musicians with a number of ladies' bands and orchestras that performed in the New England region. I think this young woman was one of those professional musicians. 

But as I put these photographs together this week I noticed a curious detail that I'd not seen before. It's quite small, and unusual to see on a woman of this era. Can you spot it? 

It's a tiny diamond or gold stud in the right ear lobe of the cornet player in the Partridge and the Chickering photos. I think it is the same young woman. Both have the same kinky hair which looks to be a ginger color. And both have a very narrow waist. But that pierced ear makes a statement that I believe only a confident talented soloist would make. Maybe one day I'll find her in a group photo of her orchestra. 

This is my contribution for Sepia Saturday

where grandma always tells
the best stories.