Photo #19 Mother and Child

Josephine and Dorothy, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.

Photo # 19: Mother and Child

On this day, probably in late 1916, my grandmother and mother posed for this portrait. There is another pose with my grandmotherlooking at her baby. I just realized that my grandmother must have been pregnant in this photo as her second child, my uncle was born in June of 1917 in Providence. I can't read the photographer's fancy scrawl for his name but he did do a good job of hiding her "baby bump".

My mother told me that her father loved sending my grandmother to have her photo taken. He thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. 

Many years later, he bought this oil painting because, my mother told me, the woman looked like my grandmother. We now know that this is a copy of a Thomas Sully (a portrait painter 1873-1872) painting of Miss Pearce, commissioned by her father Benjamin. You will see this painting in movies in formal living rooms and dining rooms on sets. We have seen it many places. It now hangs in my daughter's dining room and is a great conversation piece.

The companion photo with the side pose is very faded for it was in an oval frame in my grandmother's home. I discovered another copy of the same photo in the huge pile of photos, so I will have to scan all of them.

I just found another photo of my mother, a little older, in the same christening dress that she put me in to have a photo taken. My grandmother was an Episcopalian, so it must have been taken for infant baptism. I did not wear the dress because I was older when baptized at about 8 years old.

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