Mary Ellen Edwards
Unknown photographer
Undated; circa 1863
Albumen print, with black masking paint
3 5/8 x 2 3/8 inches
Reproduced with permission of The National Portrait Gallery, London
This carte-de-visite photograph shows Edwards in the early 1860s, when she was in her mid-twenties and beginning to establish her reputation as an outstanding artist in black and white. The image is a ghostly one, and at some time in the past its owner has tried to accentuate the figure’s definition by painting out the background in black masking paint. The photograph was finally in the possession of Algernon Graves, the chronicler of exhibitions in Victorian Britain, who gifted it to the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 1918.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image, formatting, and text by Simon Cooke
