Description

An early carte de visite portrait by Humpidge & Co., Photographers, Calcutta, depicting a European lady elegantly dressed in a fashionable mid-Victorian silk gown with braided passementerie trim, lace collar and cuffs, and holding a bouquet of flowers. She is posed before a painted landscape backdrop with a studio chair, a composition typical of professional portraiture produced in British India during the 1860s.

Humpidge & Co. was among the earliest commercial photographic studios established in Calcutta during the formative years of photography in India. Active in the 1860s, the firm catered primarily to the city’s British and Anglo-Indian community, producing cartes de visite and larger portrait formats for colonial officials, military officers, merchants, missionaries, and their families. The studio’s work reflects the rapid adoption of photography in British India following the introduction of the carte de visite, a format that became immensely popular throughout the Empire as an affordable means of exchanging and preserving portraits.

The reverse bears the studio’s printed imprint and a contemporary manuscript inscription that appears to read “Lillia Alice Rose," followed by “Calcutta, March 7th, 1867.” The inscription was almost certainly written at the time the photograph was made and likely identifies either the sitter or its intended recipient while providing a precise date of production.

Condition

Albumen print mounted on the original carte de visite card. Overall very good condition with light age toning, minor surface wear, and scattered foxing to the mount. Contemporary ink inscription on the reverse, with the personal name partially faded and difficult to decipher. The photograph retains strong contrast and pleasing detail.

References

Coe, Brian. The Birth of Photography: The Story of the Formative Years, 1800–1900. London: Spring Books, 1976.

Edwards, Elizabeth. The Camera as Historian: Amateur Photographers and Historical Imagination, 1885–1918. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012.

Hannavy, John, ed. Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography. New York: Routledge, 2008.

Thomas, Julia. Nineteenth-Century Theories of Photography. Farnham: Ashgate, 2007.

Worswick, Clark. Princely India: Photographs by Raja Deen Dayal, 1884–1910. New York: Aperture, 1980. (For background on the development of commercial photography in colonial India.)

Previous Record | Back to Photography | Next Record