Figure 1.---This boy here is Ernst Frederick unless mother neglected to write the family name. He looks to be about 8 years old. He wears a vested cut-away jacket suit with bloomer knickers and white long stockings. It is a white or very light-colored suit. Ernst seems to have a small Eton collar and no neckwear. Note the fashionable high-top shoes. His boater style hat is on the table. The studio is Ayles & Bonniwell, Trinity House, Hastings. The portrait was taken in 1861. The fact that that the mount has square corners confirm that it is an early CDV. We at first thought that the date was perhaps his birthday because the pose, the shoes, and perhaps the hat are not right for the United States in 1861. Than we noticed that it was an English CDV. This thus is very helpful in destinguishing Amerucan and English CDVs and dating English CDVs. We do not see high-top shoes commonly in America untill the 70s and poses like this also begin to appear in the 70s. The white stockings, however, were common in both America and England. Note the the square corners (the bottom two have been trimmed) and the lack of studio information on the front.

The first commercial photographic negative process was the albumen print. This began with the carte-de-viste (CDV) which was first appeared in France during the early-1850s, but were not immediately popular. We are not sure when the first English studio appeared, we believe in the mid-1850s. We do not, however, see many English CDVs from the 1850s. There may have been some from the very-late=50s. We do see large numbers from the 1860s, beginning in the very early-60s. The turning point appears to have been when André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri, a French CDV pioneer, began selling CDVs of Emperor Napoleon III. This made the format an overnight sensation. Dags and Ambros were family images. With CDVs an individual could not only have family portraits, but could purchase portraits of famous people as well. The difference of course was the negatives which could be used to reproduced the images in large numbers. This was enormously popular in the days before photographs could be published in magazines and newspapers. The phenomenon was called 'cardomania'. The same trend was observeable in America. As in America, the early CDVs have square corers. The posing of early-CDVs is not as uniform as is the case of American CDVs. This may reflect the relative popuilarity of albums. Thus we see large number of British photographs for the first time in the 1860s. And as a result, we know a great deal about English in the 1860s, much more than any previous period in English history.

The 1850s

The first commercial photographic negative process was the albumen print. This began with the carte-de-viste (CDV) which was first appeared in France during the early-1850s, but were not immediately popular. We are not sure when the first English studio appeared, we believe in the mid-1850s. We do not, however, see many English CDVs from the 1850s. There may have been some from the very late-50s.

The 1860s

We do see large numbers from the 1860s, beginning in the very early-60s. The turning point appears to have been when André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri, a French CDV pioneer, began selling CDVs of Emperor Napoleon III. This made the format an overnight sensation. Dags and Ambros were family images. With CDVs an individual could not only have family portraits, but could purchase portraits of famous people as well. The difference of course was the negatives which could be used to reproduced the images in large numbers without any reduction in quality. This was enormously popular in the days before photographs could be published in magazines and newspapers. The phenomenon was called 'cardomania'. The same trend was observeable in America. As in America, the early CDVs have square corners. The posing of early-CDVs is not as uniform as is the case of American CDVs. This may reflect the relative popularity of albums to show off in parlors. Some 1860s CDVs had bo printing ib the fronts or backs. We also se destinctive poses, especially the subjects being posed at a distance and only making up a part of the image. Many early CDVs had no printing on the font or back, but by the end of the dcade, mounts with printing begin to appear. At any rate we see large number of British photographs for the first time in the 1860s. And as a result, we know a great deal about English in the 1860s and subsequent decades, much more than any previous period in English history.

The 1870s

The CDV continued to be the primary English photographic portrait format in the 1870s. We have found relatively few English cabinet cards from the 1970s. English and other CDVs by the 1870s had destinctive fronts. We see far few blank mounts with no printing on the front or back. We do see mounts with an abreviated studio name at the bottomm left and the city at the right. This became standard for the rest of the century. We also see this format in other European countries as ell, but not America. We do not see this printed information on the front of American CDVs which in the 1870s were largely replaced by cabinet cards. We also see cards with ruling off in colors to sort of frame the image. We believe the ruling began in the 1860s, in part we have dated images from the early-70s. We do not have, however, a large enough archive to date when ruling began with any preceision. Nor do we know how common ruling was in mounts. We haope to gradually build a better view if this as such information can be helpful in dating the many CDVs that do not have notes in the back with the date.

The 1880s

We continue to see many CDVs as part of the English photographic record in the 1880s. The CDV was still a popular English photographic format in the 1880s. We begin to see more cabinet cards in the 80s, but our geneal impression is that the CDV was still the primary photographic portrait format or at least very important. We do not know why CDVs continued to be so popular in England and many other European countries. You would have thought that the larger image size of the cabinet card would have had more appeal like it did in America where the cabinet card became the major studio format in the 1870s. The studio information on 1870s CDVs was very basic. We begin to see the front of some CDVs becoming more elaborate as well as the backs. Some began looking more like cabinet cards in the 1880s

The 1890s

Created: 4:16 AM 7/14/2012
Last updated: 1:25 AM 1/24/2024