Can't remember who collects the cabinet cards of deceased children - this is for you.

This portrait was sold Friday night along with a portrait of her mother. According to what was written on the wooden back of the baby's portrait she was 5 weeks old when she died of whooping cough & her mother was the third wife of the father.

The father's name was familiar to the auctioneer so he called one of his long time buyers to inquire about his family. Turns out the father of the child was his grandfather. He wanted the women's portrait but did not want the other.

A woman who is a textile artist & a regular at the auction was thrilled when the auctioneer told her the man said to give it to her. She let me get a quick photo of the portrait before she whisked it out the door.

Having never seen anything larger than a cabinet card with this subject I knew others here would be interested in it also. I am not sure how big the portrait was but the frame measured approximately 20" across by 25" top to bottom.

 

It's sad, but cool that it survived this long intact. I'd have rescued it too, or been tempted to.

 

of course it survived - after the father took on wife #4 it went to the attica and has been there ever since.....................

 

...after creeping out the grandkids of Wife #1....

BTW- I just watched a Youtube video of the UK version of Who Do You Think You Are. This one was about Charles Dance. He never knew his father, who bailed out when Charles was a toddler. Turned out his dad was 72 when he was born and he had an older half sister who was 50 years older than he is. (hence the "had") The baby could have come from a family like that.

 

of course it survived - after the father took on wife #4 it went to the attica and has been there ever since.....................

The man did say he had been married 4 times when Bill asked.

Susan had no real clear idea as to what she was going to do with the portrait, but knowing of her other works it will be something wonderful. One of her most recent projects was a tribute to a dear friend who died of ovarian cancer much to early.

She used a trifold vanity mirror which she bought at the auction & turned it into a triptych which is on its way to England soon for some type of installation or gallery show.

 

I keep hearing this pronounced like it looks in ads on TV. It never seems to be correct. It's pronounced Hooping not Whooping. W is silent.
Is everyone else noticing this?

 

I think that is a regional/vernacular difference.

 

This disease was a big worry when I was a kid in NJ. I'd never heard it otherwise.
Since you said that I looked at the Cambridge which has it as hooping, M Webster as either.
Sounds so odd to me with the W.

 

In NH we said Whooping cough so maybe it is regional

 

But you NJ people say "rad-iator" as in radical and not "raid-iator". I had friends from NJ when I first moved to Boston and it sounded so odd. I used to tell them that a radiator radiates (long a) heat, it doesn't radiate (short a)

 

Actually...I didn't.
~
Many insist we say 'Joisey' too but only New Yorkies say that.

 

The further from New England, the stranger the pronunciations. I know we get picked on for dropping R's and putting them where they don't belong (I have an idear that we left the cah on Boylston Street). However, my neighbor from Pennsylvania always 'warshed' her clothes.

 

around here in redneck land Ohio we WARSH our clothes and then go to the LIBARY

 

Hi,
In western Pennsylvania and I mean 12 miles to West Virginia. We always had to red up the rooms before we left.
greg

 

HEY!!! I grew UP in NJ, and we had RAdiators!!!! (longA)!!!!!

 

When I was a kid in NJ I remember watching a movie (on TV with Joel McCrea---anybody remember HIM?) - he was a wandering good guy cowboy who wandered into a cabin full of a sick family that had whooping cough.....what stands and stood out was that he swabbed all their throats [they were supposedly near death] with kerosene I think it was - and hooray they all lived!!!!!!!!! Soooo ODD what sticks in the windmills of one's mind.............

 

Me too and I didn't.

 

I recall him.

 

Even as a kid, I thought he was 'dreamy'

 

Quite talented. Sang and danced too no?