A mourning widow and her children, c. 1900.Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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Etsy
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c. early 1890s.Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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Queen Victoria with the Princesses Victoria, Elisabeth, Irene, and Alix of Hesse, c. 1879.Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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5-year-old Percival H. W. Parsons and 2-year-old F. Herbert W. Parsons, c. 1867.Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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"Darling Little Ernest," English Albumen Post-Mortem Carte de Visite, taken November 6, 1868.Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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c. 1900.Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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Two boys from Wyanet, Illinois.Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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c. 1890.Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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Taken in Colfax, Illinois, c. 1890s.Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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Deceased woman, c. 1850.Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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Portrait of a French girl in Paris, c. 1865.Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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c. 1900.Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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Two sisters in Colfax, Illinois, c. early 1890s.Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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Taken in Logansport, Indiana. Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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Wright Family, c. 1860s.Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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A deceased boy holding a toy and flower, c. 1855.Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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Nellie Burr was born in Illinois in 1868. This picture was July 1, 1874.Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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Little Zdena with a dog called Broček.Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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An elderly couple identified as Daniel Chaffee and Catherine Newell. Chaffee was born June 3rd, 1783 and died in 1859. Newell was born November 24, 1805 and died less than a month after her husband.Flickr / "Victorian Photographic Portraits of People" Group
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A Victorian bearded lady.Flickr / "The Smiling Victorian" Group
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Flickr / "The Smiling Victorian" Group
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Flickr / "The Smiling Victorian" Group
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Flickr / "The Smiling Victorian" Group
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Folkestone Couple in Mourning, English Albumen Carte de Visite, c. 1885.Flickr / "The Smiling Victorian" Group
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Mrs. A. Bankart in Widow's Dress, English Albumen Carte de Visite, c. 1862.Flickr / "The Smiling Victorian" Group
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Vienna, Austria.Flickr / "The Smiling Victorian" Group
In The Time Of Victorian Portraits, The Quickest Way To Look Like An Idiot Was By Smiling
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Victorian life must have been so much fun. If you weren't dead or about to die due to infectious diseases, you were always trying to act or at least look that way.
In those early days of photography, exposures were long: The shortest method (the daguerreotype method) lasted 15 minutes. This was actually a major improvement from how long it took to shoot the very first photograph in 1826, which took all of eight hours to produce.
Common knowledge has always pointed to these long exposure times as the reason why Victorians were rarely seen smiling in photos. While it was certainly a contributing factor, the real reason that these early Victorian portraits look so somber is that people didn't smile that much in life.
Oft quoted was the wisdom "Nature gave us lips to conceal our teeth." Flashing a big ol' toothy grin was seen as classless. The only people to readily do so were either drunk or stage performers. In either case, smiling in Victorian portraits made people appear buffoonish as if they were modern-day court jesters.
Furthermore, for some, sealed lips was a very conscious effort to conceal one's teeth — orthodontia hadn't yet been invented, nor was dentistry in common practice.
Wikimedia CommonsMark Twain
Thus, in the early days of studio portraiture, the desire to create regal, non-smiling portraits actually gave us the precursor to "say cheese": Instead of the wide-mouthed grin of "cheeeeeese," studio photographers encouraged their subjects to "say prunes" instead.
Moreover, the idea with long Victorian photo exposures wasn't to capture the moment, but the essence of the individual in a way that represented who they were for their entire life.
As Mark Twain said, there would be "nothing more damning than a silly, foolish smile fixed forever."
Savannah Cox holds a Master's in International Affairs from The New School as well as a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and now serves as an Assistant Professor at the University of Sheffield. Her work as a writer has also appeared on DNAinfo.
John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.
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Cox, Savannah. "In The Time Of Victorian Portraits, The Quickest Way To Look Like An Idiot Was By Smiling." AllThatsInteresting.com, February 23, 2015, https://allthatsinteresting.com/victorian-portraits. Accessed February 27, 2025.
