Sixth-plate Tintype Portrait of Four Brothers

The subjects and the photographer are unknown, but we can estimate the date

In this video, we take a look at this sixth-plate tintype from my collection of antique photos. It’s a portrait of four men in derby hats — also called bowler hats in the UK. I’m always amazed at the amount of resolution to be found in these tiny old photographs.

Unfortunately, I don’t know who these men were, or where this was made, nor the photographer.

I’m estimating this portrait to be dated between 1890 and 1905. It shows four handsome young men — who look to me to probably have been brothers — all very well dressed and wearing their overcoats. One man has a pocket watch with a chain in his vest pocket — a practice that faded away after World War I when wristwatches became more practical and popular.

If my dating is accurate, this would have been made after the original heyday of tintype photography — which was in the 1860s and 1870s — but of course the practice of making tintypes continued down through the generations and they are still being made today.

I asked AI to examine this photo, and while I agree with some of its conclusions, it also misidentified some details about their garments, and it didn’t even recognize the print as a tintype.

Serious expressions were common in old tintypes, partly due to long exposure times, but these guys look particularly stern — maybe even sinister — although I’m sure they were perfectly good gentlemen. I feel like a great novel could be written about these four men just based on this photo.

Because tintypes are direct-to-plate original images — with no negative — most of them show the sitter flipped. However, some cameras were developed that used mirrors to create the print in its proper orientation.