An authentic Civil War-era Victorian carte de visite (CDV) featuring a full-length studio double portrait of two young sisters. They are magnificently captured in peak 1860s wartime civilian fashion, wearing their hair smoothly parted down the center and drawn flat over their temples. The seated younger sister is dressed in a bold, highly contrasting plaid or gingham checkered patterned dress detailed with short puffed sleeves and a voluminous crinoline hoop silhouette skirt, proudly holding a small leather-bound Victorian photo album or pocket Bible flatly across her lap. The standing older sister wears a highly fashionable off-the-shoulder boat neckline evening style bodice constructed from a dark solid textile, cinched tightly at the waist by a fabric belt band and accessorized by a prominent dark beaded strand necklace choker at her throat.

The photograph is presented on its original thin card stock mount featuring period-correct sharp, square corners and a delicate double-line border framing the portrait face. The reverse features a clean, beautifully preserved typographic backstamp for Knowlton's Photograph Gallery, operating on Main Street "Next door South of the Central House" in Woburn, Massachusetts. John S. Knowlton was a notable documentarian active in Middlesex County during the war years, and his collectible regional studio mark features specialty text advertising the copying of older daguerreotypes and ambrotypes. This prominent Massachusetts studio piece provides a clear circa-1863 timeframe for this original antique piece.