Portrait painting help, Age Sitter?

I found this today and at first thought it was a photograph. It appears to be painted. Hoping to get some kind of age frame and possibly who the sitter is?
Mikey

 

Looks like about 1880. He is wearing a 'Gladstone collar' near enough. Not Gladstone, though.

He does look as though he has spent some quality time grinding the faces of the poor.

 

The matting fell apart when i took it out of the frame, but here is the frame it came in. I think ill have a mat made before i sell it.

 

I'm thinking this might be what is known as a crayon portrait or solar enlargement. These were popular in the late 19th and early 20th century. It would be an enlarged photo, painted over. Many of them are not as nicely and completely painted as this.

One reason I'm thinking this is on the lower left of the picture it appears there might be an unpainted part of his lower arm, that would show the photographic part.

If you scroll about halfway down this interesting article you can see some explanation, and an example: http://brightbytes.com/woodward.html

Fig

 

What fig said! And the poor dear man -- I think he has just had dental surgery.

 

Agree. You usually don't see this level of over-painting. The arm seems to be the tell-tale clue. Besides it being an unpainted portion, there is a possibility that it is painted and the area was never varnished. This, also, could explain the difference in appearance. However, you should still be able to tell if this area is painted or a photo enlargement.

 

They don't usually look this over-painted. There was one recently posted in a Facebook photo collectors group that was confounding many of us, but even some of the people who are experts on this topic finally concluded that one was probably a solar enlargement. So I think it's possible. The one in the link that I included is nicely painted, but not as much as this.

Mikey, is it possible for you to examine that area at the lower left and maybe even post a photo of it here, if possible?

 

Sure, here are a couple of the area in question.

 

That does not look like any surface you could have a photoemulsion on. It looks more like an area not made dirty by the years.

 

To me the black part of his coat looks painted over the brown part underneath. Especially with that uneven edge of the black part.

 

It looks painted like the rest to me. Just a different color in that area. crayon painting or hand painted it is a very well done piece.