Tinted Boy with Gun
SOLD September 2001 |
Stereo daguerreotype of a boy holding toy gun, 1850s, by Warren Thompson, 22 rue de Choiseul, Paris. With Thompson's studio mark reverse-painted in cover glass, original seals intact.
Crisply detailed, with bright flesh-colored tinting on skin, purple-red to the posh chair, brown on the boy's toy gun, and green on his jacket.
It is not necessary here to detail the background of Warren Thompson, whose outstanding career is discussed in detail in Buerger's "French Daguerreotypes" (1989), pages 108-114. Thompson was an émigré American who relocated to Paris in the 1840s and become one of the most respected daguerreotypists in the city. Buerger views Thompson as another of the "great masters" of stereo-daguerreotypy on a par with Jules Duboscq and Antoine Claudet. However, good examples of Thompson's work are difficult to find. The two images offered in this sale derive from a family group and may represent two brothers, or the same boy in different dress.
