I've discovered that I have a burgeoning interest in nineteenth-century men's dress and have been learning the terminology for describing the relatively simple yet elegant clothing. For instance in this unidentified early nineteenth-century group portrait, the central figure wears a blue, short-waisted cutaway coat with long tails and wide lapels, a high-collared white linen shirt with de rigeur stock, and white trousers. The fashionable nature of his dress in comparison to the somber and conservative attire of the other sitters intrigues me. He appears to be the same age of the figure (a brother?) at left, who points to the Viceroyalty of Peru on the globe, and younger than the figure at right (the father?). Why is his dress so fashionable compared to that of the other two men? He must be the baby. We will call him "Chauncey."

The artist's depiction of the objets on the mantle and his/her adroit rendering of the mirror with a view of a well-stocked library, both of which convey a post-Enlightenment sense of cultivation and gentility, bring me back to the issue of the white trousers of the central figure (I have wish-listed Victoria Finlay's History of Color in which she documents the historical cultural significance of colors). Clean white trousers, or even white linen shirts, must have been a sign of wealth, cultivation, and elegance in the nineteenth century, and even today. To think how incredibly difficult it was to maintain the appearance of cleanliness with regard to white fabric in the nineteenth century?

I also like that the artist has priveleged the depiction of the elaborately patterned carpet over perspectival accuracy (the klismos chairs cling percipitously to the highly angled floor). Like so many of the intentional inclusions in the painting--the clothing, the globe, the objets, the books--the depiction of the carpet is more of a conveyor of economic, social, and cultural significance rather than an indicator of a realistically documented setting.