A young mother holds an infant on her lap in this sixth plate daguerreotype, produced at Samuel Van Loan's 120 Arch Street gallery in Philadelphia and dateable to his tenure there between 1854 and 1857. Van Loan, born in Ireland in 1824, was one of Philadelphia's most prolific daguerreians, advertising more than 20,000 sitters between 1849 and 1851 alone and operating across multiple Chestnut Street addresses before relocating to Arch Street. The image carries applied hand color on the mother's skirt and the infant's dress, a common embellishment of the period that heightens the visual warmth of the portrait.

The mother wears a dark silk dress with fitted sleeves and a broad lace collar fastened at the throat with a brooch, her dark hair parted at the center and drawn back in tight side curls. The infant, dressed in a white ruffled frock over a pink skirt, sits upright on her lap, bare-legged with small leather shoes, one of the mother's hands visible steadying the child at the waist. Both subjects face the camera directly.

The leather case features an embossed diamond-and-scroll cartouche pattern on the exterior and a velvet liner on the interior mat side embossed with the Van Loan gallery imprint identifying the Philadelphia address, consistent with known examples attributed to Van Loan's Arch Street period.

Property of a Palmer, Massachusetts gentleman.