NARRATOR: In this group, look for a pair of portraits—a woman with a white collar and a man wearing a top hat.

ANGUS: Upon first glance, without any context, I would probably guess that this was a painting done in a very realistic style.

NARRATOR: But these aren’t paintings—they’re a pair of photographs, with color painted on by hand. They’re portraits of a married couple,

ANGUS: Looking sort of solemn or stern as they face the camera. And then this sort of incredible orb of applied color behind them.

Throughout the nineteenth century, there’s this deep desire for photography to be in color, but the technical ability and scalability doesn't yet exist. So, as early as 1839, people are starting to apply color to photographs. This can be done in a number of different ways with oil paint, watercolors, crayons, pastels, or dyes. At the same time, a lot of portrait painters or miniature painters are suddenly threatened by the rise of photography.

NARRATOR: And some of them pivoted to working as colorists in photography studios.

ANGUS: Often we’ll see sort of tinted cheeks or things trying to warm up the skin. In this context, the skin is quite gray, quite flat. The color is sort of applied around the face. It gives it this sort of framing device.

NARRATOR: Their faces are probably enlarged copies of the heads from smaller, earlier photographs.

Perhaps the goal was to make this pair resemble more traditional and expensive painted portraits.

ANGUS: I think it does speak to this desire to situate one’s likeness within a much longer lineage. It makes the photograph seem like something more storied, more ancient, more valuable.