Untitled (Portrait of a Man Reading with Smoking Coat and Pipe)
1865
Medium
Ambrotype
Dimensions
Plate, approx: 10.3 × 7.6 cm (4 1/16 × 3 in.); Image, sight: 8.6 × 6.4 cm (3 7/16 × 2 9/16 in.); Open case: 11.8 × 18.8 × 0.9 cm (4 11/16 × 7 7/16 × 3/8 in.); Closed: 12 × 9.5 × 1.8 cm (4 3/4 × 3 3/4 × 3/4 in.)
Classification
portrait
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
249955
Art Historical Context
This intimate ambrotype portrait, titledUntitled (Portrait of a Reading with Smoking Coat and)*, captures a bespectacled man in quiet contemplation, engrossed in a book while clad in a distinctive smoking coat and holding a pipe. Created by an unknown maker in 186, the image is rendered on a glass plate measuring about 10.3 × 7.6 cm, housed in a protective case—typical for preserving these delicate 19th-century photographs. Displayed in the Art Institute of Chicago's Photography and department, it exemplifies the's fascination with personal portraiture. Ambrotypes, popular from the mid-1850s ...