Four albumen carte-de-visite portraits comprise this lot, dating to the 1870s through 1880s and produced by studios in Michigan, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Hamburg, Germany. The largest and most striking image depicts a bearded man, a young boy in a double-breasted jacket, and a woman in a striped dress with lace collar, all seated around a pedestal table spread with books and photograph albums. The remaining three CDVs show a small child in a white dress seated beside a framed portrait, a woman in a dark buttoned bodice holding a small case, and a boy in a dark suit seated in a barley-twist chair with books stacked on an adjacent stand.

The family portrait features the man's full curling beard, the woman's pinned curls and bracelet, and the boy's pocket square, while the studio column backdrop anchors the composition. The seated woman in the center CDV wears drop earrings and a brooch at her throat, her hand resting on a tasseled footstool.

The studios represented span three countries, suggesting these portraits were assembled from multiple family branches over time, making the lot of particular interest to social historians and collectors of Victorian vernacular photography.

Reverses bear imprints for Photo Artist of Muskegon, Michigan; Gallery of Art, M. W. Burns, Eau Claire, Wisconsin; Pease Brothers of Lee, Massachusetts and West Cornwalls, Connecticut; and A. Kindermann, Hamburg, St. Georg. Manuscript notations and catalog numbers are present on several reverses.