Woman at Table,

ca. 1858

<p> Introduced in 1839, the salted paper print offered a more affordable option to painted portraits, a luxury available only to the most privileged classes in the form of specially commissioned canvases. Porter and Hoag, who owned the lucrative Cincinnati-based gallery Porter’s Art Palace, combined this photographic printing technique with painting to produce portraits that were durable and relatively affordable but evoked the tradition of painted portraiture through meticulous hand-coloring and ornate frames. In this image, the photograph underneath the paint can be discerned in the fine-grained details such as the woman’s thick curls and ornate lace headpiece. The added coloring provides naturalistic elements, like the pink on her cheeks and golden highlights in the fabric of the dress. </p>