Preface

When it comes to Victorian history, there are few surprises anymore. It was all written long ago, then thoroughly revisited before this Century began. The lies were dispensed with, the warm glow of nostalgia freeze-dried, the truth finally brandished like the flag of rebellion. BUT I FOUND THIS...

Some smart aleck thinks he has an idea. Facts are challenged and traditions ignored… and sacred cows heartlessly butchered like baby veal. But then, that is why we love history. Just when everything gets nailed down, controversy rips through our comfort zones like a straight-line wind. Relax. I don’t want to upset the applecart. But not too long ago, my decade-long search brought me to this GRAND SLAM (above)... and I believe it teaches us some things we did not know. I'll let you try to figure that out, and I will come back to that later.

But for now I’m going to have some fun. I’m calling myself “the DoppelCatcher,” my word for someone obsessed with faces, comparing them, yes, finding doppelgangers, and sharing them. That's our former president and commedian George Carlin. I'll let you figure out which is which.

I’ve been doing this for about a decade. Most of my spare time has been spent on this crazy quest, all because I discovered that I had a good eye for such things. Online auctions like Ebay made the hunt easy and profitable, since the world is full of unidentified photographs, and unappreciative persons who want to get rid of them. When I realized that I could spot an unrecognized doppelganger almost every day on the Internet, hunting them became my passion.

It’s Open Season, 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. And it’s as easy a scrolling with your computer mouse. But then, you have to be willing to scroll past about a thousand unprepossessing mugs to find one. Like hunting that needle in the haystack. And your reward is that you have to buy the thing, and it might be expensive if the seller prized it for a completely unrelated reason. The reason is usually their nagging suspicion that the image is SOMEBODY, they just can’t place them.

Outlaw Pearl Hart, the "Last Stagecoach Robber," brandished her pistols on an old post card, but nobody seemed to recognize her on Ebay. But I did.

This was one of the very first dops I acquired, but after years of research, I decided it is just that, a doppelganger, dangit. I’ve been a hunter all of my life. First it was mice in my mother’s kitchen cabinet. Then I moved up to rabbits and squirrels. Later my cousin taught me how to “flounder,” a Texas and Gulf Coast tradition of gigging flounders at night by hunting them with a lantern. I’ve shot doves, ducks and deer, but none gave me the thrill of a great DOPPELGANGER! And every once in a while, one that might actually be a famous person out of history!

Introduction

We all think we have a seen one. A “look-alike.” A dead-ringer. Usually, more scrutiny reveals a person who merely fleetingly reminded us of someone.

Actually finding one is a long shot, for sure. Studies insist that there is only a one -in-a-Trillion chance that you will find a true look-alike. When and if you do, it is a big deal.

These ladies do "look alike"- but there are differences which keep them from being true doppelgangers. The one on the left has a toothier smile, a broader, shorter nose and slanted eyes. Compare the nose bridge. Compare the gums exposed when smiling. This is why I score them at only 90% alike... I'll explain how I establish that judgement below.

As an artist, one who has studied anatomy and life drawing; one who has painted portraits professionally, and one who thinks and relates and expresses himself in imagery the way a physicist uses numbers, I have a natural advantage in identifying doppelgangers. My lifelong love of history gave me a wealth of visual clues in my mental hard drive, so unfortunately doppelgangers have become an obsession and sometimes a curse, as they began to surface in online auctions. And each time I wondered… could it be?

My Obsession

I also have a life-long love of photography, and especially antique images. When I run across a great old tintype, and it features a doppelganger to my mind’s eye, I am hooked! Over the past ten years, this has occurred many times, resulting in many acquisitions, and triggering many hours of study and research in an impossible saga of authentication of them. Some are just for my own sastisfaction- that they actually almost exist!

Our eyes are very accurate judges, but they are often deceived by our desire to witness a surprising similarity, because it is fun and intriguing. Look-alikes have entertained many readers over the decades, thanks to Dickens, Dostoesvky, Mark Twain and Edgar Allen Poe. There are scores of books about the subject in the bookstores today- all built around the assumption or myth that somewhere in the world is a person that looks just like you! And we already wonder where we might find them, and what they are doing. Sort of a twin-envy fantasy. And now the Internet is rife with such examples, supported by supposed “Face ID.”

Newsflash, so-called facial recognition technology is not reliable. Its burden of proof is low and has encouraged the misconception that doppelgangers are common. It does not adequately consider race, correct period clothing, loss of teeth, weight loss or gain, or other markers which my investment in my collection demands. But still it grew. And grew.

Five-Point Quintangulation (Q-5)

Our eyes don't lie, but our brains can be fooled. Consider this. Have you ever noticed that you can recognize most people you know from behind? Just the back of the head is enough to tell. When we run into someone who looks like someone we know, and we go up to them, most of the time we immediately realize our mistake. It was the hair, or the posture, or just the general description. Then we say, "I'm sorry, I thought you were someone I know..." But if the real person was standing next to them, there would be no confusion, only a laugh at the similarities. Very few persons have ever encountered a true doppelganger, where they had to argue about the identity of the person, who insisted they were not who they were mistaken for. But doppelgangers do exist... I've processed and scored a few favorites on the Internet so you can see how rare it is.

So discovering a 140 year-old tintype of a person who "looks like somebody," as in EXACTLY, from THE RIGHT ERA IN history is not that common.

After a while, as my collection became burdensome, I devised a precise, mathematical method using Photoshop to satisfy myself that my “finds” were just that and not mysterroneous (my word) investments. And some indeed were.

I’ll show them all if you have the patience. But to my astonishment, a majority of my doppelgangers passed my fairly high burden of proof. I call it the “Q-5” process and will explain it briefly. I isolate a minimum of five unchangeable points on a face, then superimpose them with exactness on the doppelganger. I require a near 95% alignment to declare a success. (Due to many variations, especally the camera angle, it will very rarely be 100%) Then with any luck, odds are it is most probably the famous person in question. And my Q-5 process is not an easy one to gain that declaration.

Internet auctions are lousy with false claims, built on weak similarities, as sellers try to market their amazing finds and get a million bucks for yet another photograph of Billy the Kid. Hope springs eternal! Right here I offer any doppelcatcher out there the FREE SERVICE of putting their image through my process… if they want to know the truth. Just e-mail a decent-sized image and I will return it within a week, if not much sooner. If you’re like me, you hate being delusional, and you hate wasting your time and energy (and money!).

Is THAT Who I Think IT IS?

This collection started many years ago with mostly wishful thinking and some uncanny look-alikes found in antique shops. But after I discovered one online auction seller marketing tens of thousands of images (Literally!), some which were unquestionably famous persons in history, the catchings began in earnest.

I purchased this early 1900's cabinet card at a antique shop, and researched for years, believing it was Butch Cassidy and his gang with Etta Place. To this day my convictions have been mixed. This was the typical result in much of my "doppelcatching."

Martha Maxwell, famous in her own time as Colorado's leading naturalist and taxidermist. My first "for sure" acquisition was easy, a famous huntress who was a pioneer in American taxidermy. She was unidentified, but she was unusual, and collectors went after her because of the gun. Holding a handful of chipmunks in one hand and a shotgun in the other, she unfortunately brought a good price for the seller anyway. After buying the image, I delved into her and her career, and a deluge of discoveries followed. Outside of my woman, my Faith and my career, this turned out to be the major quest of my life!

That first seller seemed perplexingly uninterested in his old photos, had minimal knowledge about them or their history, and no clue of their importance. And he could not be enticed into much discussion about them. Perhaps by inheritance, he acquired what must have been a massive Victorian era publisher’s photography library. But it had been disastrously conveyed without any identifications. No story, no provenance. I could never know for sure, but I delved into his mountain of tin anyway, relishing in just the pure fun of playing history detective! I was recovering from a heart attack, and it was a perfect distraction during my recovery. It's been a blast!

THE ARTISTS

The Artists - My studies in Art History in college paid off somewhat when familiar faces started showing up in my Internet “honey-hole.” I was not as familiar with the French Impressionists as I was about to become, but I knew Edouard Manet when I saw him. And Berthe Morisot, and Edgar Degas. In a bizarre, if not impossible alignment of the stars, eventually fifty tintypes emerged featuring Victorian era artists, or to skeptics, their look-alikes. All of them without context. All from one seller.

American ex-patriot and accomplished watercolorist, Edward Darley Boit and prominent American Impressionist Childe Hassam pose with two well-connected French girls... and artist's models; Julie Manet (center) and Genevieve Mallarme.

This was a veritable cascade of coincidences, or a valuable record to Art History. Were they doppelgangers? Surely it was my strong imagination which turned these mundane photographs into tin gold. It was absurd. How could so many unpublished images of famous artists be found together, and unbeknownst to the person who owned them? But then, how could so many doppelgangers be found together as well? It’s not like they naturally hang out together. I had no time to question the veracity of my suppositions, but instead entered into a deep study of these artists and their associations. Because I was discovering not only doppelgangers of famous artists, but of their families and friends as well. To buy or not to buy? A tintype of Berthe Morisot with her family, labeled “four people posing” was selling for a pittance, and HISTORY MUST BE SAVED! I searched the Internet, bought art books… and one by one, purchased this amazing collection.

Pierre Auguste Renoir seated, (I beleive) with his very secret baby son and two young women... Berthe Morisot, (acting as an adoption facilitator?) and his model and the child's mother, Lise Trehot. Little Pierre, (not to be confused with Renoir's oldest legitimate son) was given to a Foster home and never heard from again. Trehot and Renoir had a daughter later, again out of wedlock, but whom Renoir was notably, yet secretly faithful to. Trehot is not believed to have ever shown interest in either of the children.

A dozen books later, and many purchases, I was convinced, I had made the most important discovery in Art History in the century! At the same time these rare images were surfacing, so were tintypes of more doppelgangers, of American artists, actors, writers and even Pinkerton detectives. Then a First Lady, or her look-alike, and some prominent Women’s Suffragists. They could not all possibly be real, but I had to buy them and find out. If only a few were what I thought they were, they would justify the expense. If nothing else, I would have amassed the world’s most amazing doppelganger collection! And then I discovered a secret weapon.

PAY ATTENTION!

PAY ATTENTION! Researching, I discovered a valuable asset inherent on the Internet. Whenever you “Google” something in image search, the world-wide web drags up EVERYTHING associated with that subject, in no particular order. Only that the more something is viewed, the closer to the top it rises. As you search for acceptable images to compare your newfound famous face, Google is showing you everyone they ever knew, their relatives, friends, enemies, fans, whomever. It seems random… but in my case, the Internet was inadvertently giving me visual clues which helped me recognize other faces being sold by the same seller; ones which otherwise, I would never have recognized.

Alice Hoschede, Monet's second wife.

So, when I saw an image I thought to be Claude Monet, (or his doppelganger) and searched Google for similar angles for comparison, Google was showing me his wives, children and associates. Incredibly, this helped me identify many more images, which were not that valuable, but precious to history. Sadly, because my research sometimes took so long, I failed to acquire some tintypes before they were sold, and the one of Monet was one of them! But I was able to purchase tintypes of his wives and children!

Little Michel Monet, an irresistible subject! The similarity of this tintype to Michel's portrait below suggests that this, and probably the other French tintypes were collected by a trusted friend, perhaps also the photograppher, for a scrapbook of some kind about the "Impressionists." Who else could manage to assemble such an intimate photographic record? Edgar Degas was one such associate, not only famous for his Impressionist pastels, but also known by his frioends for his passion for photographing. He made a habit of turning every social situation into a photo shoot. It must be assumed that Monet used this tintype photograph (or a copy of it) as a resource in the creation of the portrait of Michel below. Or this is just a doppelganger of Michel, which found itself among all the other doppelgangers of French artists and their families. When donkeys fly!

As my favorite actor, Tom Selleck on Magnum P.I. always said. “I know what you are thinking.” You are thinking, “This is crazy, this story is beyond luck or coincidence, it has to be a big cock and bull story, and it’s wasting my time… Maybe.” And I would agree with you. But I have just lived it. I’m like the Apostle Peter at Pentecost- “… we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” Here's Tom compared to his Victorian dop.

Eventually, after you see this collection, and appreciate the Q-5 technique, and consider the one-in-a-Trillion chance of locating a true doppelganger… you will probably not consider most these faces to be those of doppelgangers. The odds are against that. But as far as accepted authentication is concerned, that is the only claim I can make.