Item #4321 Correct Profile Likenesses, Taken at Mr. ___ from 8 o’clock in the morning until 9 in the evening. Chapman Mr.

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Chapman, Mr.

Correct Profile Likenesses, Taken at Mr. ___ from 8 o’clock in the morning until 9 in the evening.

[Salem, Mass.?], circa 1800. Broadside, 6.75” x 8.625”, with silhouette portrait cuts. CONDITION: Good, small brown stain at top, a few light spots and old creases.

A charming broadside advertising the services of American silhouettist Moses Chapman, illustrated with silhouette cuts of a man and a woman and specifying costs and other particulars.

Chapman informs the public that he is available from 8:00 am to 9:00 pm, and takes “correct Profiles, reduced to any size, two of one person for 25 cents, neatly cut on beautiful paper.” Painting and shading are an additional 75 cents, and frames are available “from 50 cents to 2 dollars each.” He also notes that the machine he uses is “universally allowed by the best judges to be more corect than any before ever invented.” The blanks provided for the location in which Chapman is temporarily established, the name of the town, and the day of his departure, have not been filled in.

Moses Chapman (1783–1821) was an itinerant silhouettist, who established a shop in Salem in 1808, as indicated by an advertisement in the Salem Register: “Moses Chapman informs the ladies and gentlemen of Salem that he has taken a shop next to Mr. Morgan’s in North Street, where he will take profiles in the newest and most elegant style.”

Item #4321

Price: $900.00

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