Another CDV added to the collection. My first Mathew Brady CDV with the Washington DC studio imprint. I suspect that she was a circus sideshow performer, because even in the Victorian era when zaftig women were more popular, she is not the kind of zaftig that the Victorians found sexy.

Also note the book under her foot. I suspect it was just a posing prop to give her body some form and dynamic, but it would be interesting to know if there were something meaningful to the book underfoot. Books were a very common studio prop, usually held in the hand, to indicate that the subject was literate and had some kind of intellectual accomplishment. By extension, stepping on a book would seem to imply a deliberately and blatantly anti-intellectual attitude, which would have been at extreme odds with the contemporary ethos, and would seem out of character for a studio like Mathew Brady’s – he went out of his way to cultivate associations with the best and the brightest of his day. So it’s probably just a posing device, no meaning implied.