Dead Child On a Sofa (c. 1855): Art, History and Details

Dead Child On a Sofa (c. 1855) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This carefully staged daguerreotype of a dead child is an outstanding example of a very common subject: the postmortem portrait. Using the stylistic conventions of the day, the unidentified artist successfully created a visually pleasing scene, despite the nature of the image. Dressed in white with a bouquet of flowers on the chest, the child, seen in profile, reclines on an elaborately patterned sofa. Delicate flesh tones were added to the cheek and arm, suggestive of a healthy child sleeping. The high rate of infant mortality throughout the 19th century made this variety of portraiture common, satisfying the emotional need of the parents to have a lasting memory of a loved one.

Object facts

• Title: Dead Child On a Sofa
• Date: c. 1855
• Culture: America
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: daguerreotype, applied color, quarter-plate
• Dimensions: Image: 6.3 x 8.7 cm (2 1/2 x 3 7/16 in.); Case: 11.8 x 9.4 cm (4 5/8 x 3 11/16 in.); Mounted: 8.2 x 10.7 cm (3 1/4 x 4 3/16 in.); Matted: 50.8 x 61 cm (20 x 24 in.)
• Collection: PH - American 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 2002.35

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.