The postcard

Format governs everything in this plate. A postcard is small, vertical and held close, and a composition made for that object cannot afford a wide establishing view. The figure fills the frame from top to bottom, which is not a stylistic flourish but the only arrangement the format allows.

She wears a riding habit, gloves and boots to the knee, standing square to the camera with a crop held loosely in one hand. The costume is the alibi described in from postcards to print. Every item in it has an ordinary explanation, and it is precisely the ordinariness that let images like this be printed, posted and kept on a mantelpiece. A seated man occupies the lower right corner, reduced to a hat brim and part of a shoulder.

The tinting is the point of the exercise. Hand colour was applied over a monochrome print by workers moving quickly, so it was never comprehensive, and the selections tell you what the trade thought mattered. Here the colour goes to the lips, the gloves and the boots and stops. The rest stays in warm sepia, and the three tinted elements pull the eye around the figure in a loop.

Working in the manner reveals how efficient the convention was. Three small areas of colour organise an entire picture, and they cost the colourist perhaps a few seconds. Restraint of that kind is usually described as taste. It was piecework.