Portrait of Cleopatra Bella Brown

Title

Portrait of Cleopatra Bella Brown

Description

Sepia-toned image of a young woman in a suit and bonnet. She wears a two-piece dress with a bustle and a pleated fringe on the bottom, and a pleated detail at the cuffs of her sleeves. Lace trim and fingerless gloves complete her fashionable attire. Her dress is typical of styles in the late 1870s, given its lack of a draped overskirt and relatively minor ornamentation. However, since the addressee in the transcription, Alice Sewell, was born in 1888 and photo postcards were not available until after 1902, it is likely that Ms. Brown had the photo reprinted at a later date. While the museum has no record of just who, exactly, Cleopatra Bella Brown was, Alice Sewell was a student at Pacific University in 1907 and 1908, then in 1911, after studying art in New York, returned to teach art at Pacific for a few years. Ms. Sewell was a sculptor and painter and remained an integral part of the Portland area art scene for much of the first half of the twentieth century.

[back] [ink] To Alice. Compliments of Cleopatra Bella Brown.

Identifier

WCMpic_012169

Subject

Fashion

Photography of women

Feminine beauty (Aesthetics)

Female friendship

History (General)

Secondary Education

Spatial Coverage

Washington County, Oregon

Language

English

Date Created

circa 1870s-1900s

Date

1870/1910

Medium

photographic postcards

Rights

Online access to this image is for research and educational purposes only. To inquire about permissions, order a reproduction, or for more information, please contact the Five Oaks Museum at Research@FiveOaksMuseum.org.

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/CNE/1.0/

Type

Still Image

Source

Washington County Museum