I remember reading a very good article in a magazine that dealt with the artistic and historical aspects of photography which dealt with portraits of soldiers going off to the Civil War and prospectors going off to the Klondike. The point was made that people generally assume that all of the clothing, weapons and implements belonged to the subject but in many cases these were props owned by the photographer. I've seen several cases where a photo of a Civil War soldier shows up on the Antiques Roadshow and the appraiser says something like, "...we can see that he went off to battle very well armed." and I have to sort of do a double take at this assumption.

I have to assume that the same sort of thing may have taken place with the old fellas posing for the portrait painter...that some of the articles in the portraits could have been brought in because they "photographed better".

I take Jock's point about the difference between what's pictured and their everyday habiliments...I mean, think about it...any of you guys ever been deer hunting with somebody who looks like they just got done posing for the Cabela's Catalogue? Personally, I was out fly fishing once and a dude showed up looking like he went into Orvis and handed them a blank check and said, "I wanna look like a fly fisher." and they sold him every bloody thing in the store...including what looked like a gen-u-ine "A River Runs Through It" hat that was two sizes too big. This pilgrim nearly killed several of us because we laughed so hard that we almost fell into some swift current. We have a photo of my dad from WWII and he's brandishing a Thompson sub-machine gun...he readily admits that neither he nor anybody else in his unit ever actually got issued the Thompson but they let them use it for photos to send back home.

Sorry if I'm saying it the long way around, but what you see isn't always what was actually there...be careful drawing inferences from photos and illustrations.

Best

AA