Quarter-plate daguerreotype depicting a young child seated cross-legged on a studio chair against a plain drape. The pose is frontal and composed, with one hand resting across the lap and the gaze directed toward the camera. Hair is neatly parted and the unclothed torso evokes the classical putto, a convention familiar from mid-nineteenth-century portrait painting and sculpture. Controlled skylight models the face and body with the economy typical of professional rooms.

Family studios of the 1840s and 1850s often made “cherub” portraits of toddlers, and many were created within photographers’ own households. Provenance and subject treatment strongly suggest the sitter is the maker’s child, a reading consistent with contemporaneous practice in which parents experimented with lighting, pose, and temperament using their children as patient models. Minimal props and a neutral backdrop keep attention on expression and bodily presence, producing an image that is intimate without sentimentality.