Primitive daguerreotype "The Two Brothers" signed Coquet c. 1848

A very beautiful daguerreotype of two brothers holding hands.

Format sixth of plate with a white mat, typical of early daguerreotypes, black mats would be systematized after 1845.

On the reverse, COQUET, No. 20 rue Appoline, Paris, a business label illustrated with small, burlesque figures and animated by a devil behind a camera taking a portrait of a man holding an oval frame. (BnF description)

The daguerreotype was the first photographic process, developed by Nicéphore Niépce and later Louis Daguerre, and introduced to the world (except the United Kingdom) by France in 1839. It is both a negative and a positive, hence its characteristic mirror effect. In the 19th century, they were also poetically called "mirrors that remember."