The “Unknown Sitters” exhibit at The Historic New Orleans Collection has a case of amnesia. The identities of the men, women and children in the antique portraits have mostly been lost to history. Visitors are left wondering, who are these people?

Who’s the dashing young antebellum man holding a riding jacket over his arm? Is he a gentleman or a scoundrel? Considering his slight smirk, he could go either way.

Who’s the alluring 19th-century woman in the scarlet head wrap staring self-assuredly from the canvas? Does the artist see her as more than a model?

And who is the old woman with the rosary beads, apparently enraptured by her faith? Does she look back on a lifetime spent in New Orleans? Or is she a 19th-century arrival, perhaps a Sicilian immigrant like her portrait’s painter, Achille Peretti?

It’s impossible to say. “Unknown Sitters” is a series of enigmas in golden frames. 

The unusual show continues through Oct. 6 at The Historic New Orleans Collection, the museum and research center in the French Quarter dedicated to the Crescent City and the Gulf South.

Exhibit curator Lydia Blackmore said the lack of information can be ironic. She drew attention to a 6-foot-tall portrait of five 19th-century children. Considering the expense of such a large-scale painting and the fine clothing the kids are wearing, the artwork was obviously commissioned by a family of wealth. It was meant to be an eternal heirloom, a record for future generations to behold. But somewhere along the line, Blackmore said, the painting got separated from its owners and the children slipped into anonymity.

 And since the kids were rendered with practically identical faces, they seem even more generic.

‘People like me’

One of the more modest artworks in the collection is a pastel drawing titled “Young Girl with Pink Bows,” created by a Jackson Square artist named Max Hill in 1958. The portrait of a Black child is soft and dreamy, unlike the era, which was jagged and dark, plagued by deep-set racism. How did she view the world, six years before the Civil Rights Act, with segregation only beginning to erode?

“Young Girl with Pink Bows” hangs beside a mirror. Blackmore suggested that young visitors to the exhibit might peer into the mirror and ask themselves, “How did people like me experience life?”

In all of the artworks, Blackmore said the absence of information allows visitors “to see what stories we might find.”

Can you really blame me?

The Historic New Orleans Collection wants the public to interact with these mysterious people from the past. Cards invite visitors to write observations, opinions and inspirations, which can be posted beside the art. Crayons and paper are provided for impromptu portraits. The people in the ornate frames are probably pleased by all the attention.

The exhibit even includes a selfie station where visitors can pose, surrounded by a gold frame.

For schoolkids, the staff of The Historic New Orleans Collection made the search for the paintings’ backstories into a game. Via the internet, the staff invited students to concoct stories or poems based on the paintings. The museum received an avalanche of replies, 1,100 in all. Most were from the region, but several were from elsewhere in the country and around the globe.

Reactions to the unknown sitters can be charming, telling and sometimes amusing.

In her empathetic response to “Young Girl with Pink Bows,” fourth-grader Ava Luangkesorn of Sewickley, Pennsylvania, wrote: “She sees, a girl of truth with no need of lies. She sees, a girl with hope inside.”

Beside a painting of a flamboyant woman surrounded by moths, Eloise Ritter, a sixth-grader from New Orleans, wrote a passage from the perspective of one of the insects: “Unlike the much-loved butterfly, I am just not in people’s sights. My color’s too drab, wings too bulky. Still I flap wildly.”

Next to a painting of a gentleman with a devilish upturned mustache and goatee hangs a story by Zachary high school student Jayden Bergeron, who concluded the man was surely a vampire.

“I let the woman’s limp body drop as I finished my meal,” Bergeron delightedly wrote. “I only take the lives of newcomers to the city. New Orleans is not for them.”

Bergeron added: “Can you really blame me? A man has to eat.”

‘That’s my grandfather!’

The collection’s curators are always looking for the backstories of the unknown sitters. Blackmore said the museum hit the jackpot when a New Orleans woman contacted them to say, “That’s my grandfather!”

Karen Kraak Wood said she spotted her grandfather, Henry Kraak, on a Historic New Orleans Collection brochure. Excited by the discovery, Wood brought her grandkids down to the French Quarter on Mother’s Day to lay eyes on their ancestor in the museum.

Kraak was born in Germany and made his way to America in 1904 to work at the St. Louis World’s Fair, Wood said. Not long after, he came to New Orleans, where he was employed by Lawrence Fabacher, owner of the Jax Brewery.

In time, Kraak married a fellow German woman, and they established a successful Uptown floral shop and a horticulture business. The couple had eight children.

True, Wood said, Kraak doesn’t look particularly jolly in the portrait. He could be very stern. But, she said, grandfather had his moments. He was active in New Orleans’ German community, and he relaxed around his pals. Each year, she said, Kraak raised a pig that provided the meat for a cookout at Deutsches Haus, the German social club.

‘I’m so glad’

So, how did Kraak’s portrait end up at the French Quarter museum?

Well, apparently, an artist and photographer named Newton Reeve Howard snapped a photo of Kraak around 1950, not long before Kraak died. Sometime later, Howard used the photo as a model for an oil portrait of Kraak surrounded by tropical foliage.

But the painting never belonged to the Kraak family. Instead, the artist hung it in The Alpine, a French Quarter watering hole on Chartres Street, in hopes of drumming up portrait business.

Wood said she knew her grandfather’s portrait was on display in The Alpine, but lost track of the painting when the bar closed in the 1990s. In 1996, The Historic New Orleans Collection bought the portrait of the unsmiling Kraak from an art dealer. Wood laughingly said she offered to buy grandfather back, but the museum decided to keep him.

“I’m so glad it ended up here,” she said of the painting.

The Historic New Orleans Collection, at 520 Royal St., is open daily except Monday. Admission is free. For more information, visit the THNOC website.