Featured WHAT DO I HAVE? ANTIQUE PICTURE? PRINT? OF BABY GIRL IN OVAL METAL FRAME

Can anyone tell me what I have? The baby girl is beautiful! (reminds me of mine when she was first born) And I think it may be victorian (judging from the dress)?
Is it a print? Litho? Photograph? Painting?
It's in a oval metal frame & measures 20" x 16"
Thanks!
PS - The thing is dirty - I tried wiping the bottom with a damp cloth but you can see how it dries in 1st photo at bottom of baby's dress/gown with the horizontal swipe marks.
The paper/medium the picture is on feels kind of like a slightly fuzzy cardboard? if that makes sense?
Again, I appreciate any help.

 

Christening dresses get handed down in families, so age of dress not necessarily indication of when the christening took place. The baby could be a boy; christening gowns are gender neutral.

Just the fact that it is oval encourages me to think it goes back to Edwardian or earlier.

 

Others will bring some actual knowledge to the topic. My one thought is that medium could be chalk? My other is how much market is there for reproductions of pictures done to celebrate the christening of someone else's child?

 

It might be a crayon portrait but wait for others to weigh in.

http://sgarwood.com/node/52

Crayon Portraits
Large portraits were expensive and only available to the wealthiest of patrons. D. A. Woodward was a portrait painter and thought that if a photograph could be enlarged but made week, he could then paint over the image, increasing the quality but also the speed of the portrait. In 1857 he invented The Woodward Solar Enlarging Camera which generated a weak but large image on canvas, developed in the sun that he then touched up and augmented with crayon among other medium. The combining of crayon and photograph gave birth to a new commercial portrait aesthetics in both photography and portraiture that enjoyed great success from roughly 1860 through about 1905, and in some isolated areas until the Great Depresion. These were the first "life-sized" photographic images that were available for portraiture. Artists used bromide, silver, and platinum prints as the photographic base. An out of print book (1882) by J. A. Barhydt describes the process of making the portraits, "Crayon Portraiture: Complete Instructions for Making Crayon Portraits on Crayon Paper and on Platinum, Silver, and Bromide Enlargements." Now and then a copy shows up on eBay for around twenty bucks or so. Unfortunately, the genre is not highly valued as a topic to historians of photography, as evidenced in most texts on the subject.

The crayon portrait was popular from 1860 to the early twentieth century. According to a State Historical Society of Missouri Newsletter, the process required to produce a crayon portrait started by enlarging a photograph onto drawing paper with a weak photographic emulsion producing a faint image. The artist then drew over the picture with charcoal or pastels, trying to duplicate the photograph while making it look hand drawn. The quality of the picture was entirely dependent on the artist’s skill. Tinting or gilding was sometimes added to enhance the effect. From a few feet away, it is often taken for a photograph but viewed up close, it can be seen to be a drawing.

 

I was just curious.....what do you plan on doing with it......keeping it and restoring it, selling it??? If it IS a crayon portrait, there might not be much you can do to the original..... Can you tell me the size of it....in the frame??? Or what is the size of the frame?? It IS a very sweet image!!!!! Whether boy or girl!!

Edit: Never mind the size....just re-read your original post!!!! Still sweet!!!