This especially attractive late-Victorian cabinet card portrays a young woman identified on the reverse as “Miss Laura Burch – Pine Bluff – Ark.” She is shown in profile wearing an elegant light-colored fitted dress with a richly ruffled and lace-trimmed bodice, decorative floral ornament at the shoulder, earrings, several rings, and a broad mesh-style bracelet. Her hair is arranged in an elaborate late-19th-century fashion, with curled bangs across the forehead and carefully arranged curls and rolls at the back. She rests one arm upon a fringed upholstered studio prop, creating a relaxed and unusually graceful composition. The reverse also bears a bold period inscription reading “H. A. Shinn, Photographer, Pine Bluff, Ark.” A second, much fainter pencil notation appears to read “Mrs. C. A. Alexander.” That may indicate that Laura Burch later became Mrs. Alexander but that hypotheses in not based on any real evidence. The photographer is particularly interesting. Arkansas business and city-directory research identifies H. A. Shinn as Henry A. Shinn, a photographer active in Pine Bluff for many years. He appears to have been associated with the earlier firm Pye, Bradford & Shinn in Pine Bluff as early as 1878. By 1883–84 he was operating at the northwest corner of Bonne and Lindsay, and in the 1888–89 business directory he was listed as proprietor and manager of the Pine Bluff Photo-Enlarging and Copying House at Second Avenue and Chestnut. His advertisement offered everything from small photographs to life-size portraits, including work in color and crayon as well as large permanent bromide enlargements. By 1892–93 the business was listed as H. A. Shinn & Co., with photographer Walter J. Perrings as his associate. The surviving directory record then shows a Harry A. Shinn operating Shinn’s Photo Studio in Little Rock beginning in the mid-1890s, at 120½ Main Street, offering carbon, carbonette, platinum and other fashionable photographic finishes. The chronology and initials strongly suggest a connection with the Pine Bluff photographer, although the directory compiler gives the Pine Bluff man as Henry and the Little Rock photographer as Harry, so I would not claim with absolute certainty that they are the same person. Personal information about Shinn is much scarcer, but a 1906 Pine Bluff newspaper notice concerning the marriage of Miss Mary Shinn describes her as the daughter of the late H. A. Shinn and states that he had been a prominent citizen of Pine Bluff. That at least tells us that the Shinn family had standing in the community and that H. A. Shinn had died by 1906. Based on Shinn’s documented Pine Bluff career, the mount style, and Laura Burch’s clothing and hairstyle, I would date this portrait to approximately 1888–1892, with circa 1890 being a very reasonable listing date. SOLD
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