Miniatures and Paintings
Portraits are an important historical source that provide additional information about mourning practices, including attire. Some of these portratis depict women wearing mourning jewelry, similar to items found in the Filson’s collection. The Filson also has examples of posthumous paintings, a few of which are highlighted here. Posthumous portraits were common during the 19th century, particularly if families had no prior images by which they could remember their loved ones. Bodies were often prepared and laid out in family homes, rather than in funeral parlors, facilitating postmortem portraiture. Historian Phoebe Lloyd uncovered numerous newspaper advertisements of artists who painted “from corpse”, the primary method used before the age of photography, after which artists began to paint portraits from daguerreotypes taken during life or postmortem. Many painters found it financially necessary to do such paintings even though the task was both emotionally and technically difficult. Tragically, many posthumous portraits are of children due to the high rate of childhood mortality in the 19th century.
Source:
Lloyd, Phoebe. “Posthumous Portraits of Children in Nineteenth-century America.” Social Science 71, no. 1 (1986): 32-3