Baby in Christening Dress with Elaborately Hidden Mother Antique TIntype house shaped box framed with black tape around

framed with black tape around the edge and with numbers and hand-written labels below

framed by green and black checkered head cloth

The details--nothing more than is needed but is exactly what is--lend him a buttoned up suit

French I believe

I don't care a bit

Baby in Christening Dress with Elaborately Hidden Mother Antique TIntype house shaped box framed with black tape aroundI presume it is a mother hidden somewhere there under this wide and ambling drape of cloth an unusual expanse as far as I've seen. What I really like here is the play between that horizontal stretch of draping, almost like a landscape of dark cloth, and long, vertical drape of this child's white (christening?) gown, falling all the way to the ground. And then of course that baby's wide eyed face at the center of it all, looking simultaneously relaxed