Figure 1.--This is one of the thousands of child portaits made by W.J. Byrne at his Richmond studio. This undated CDV was probably made in the early 1880s. Note the rather small size of the boy's Eton collar. Also note the small bowtie-like neckwear that was worn tucked under the collar. Image courtesy of the MD collection.

W.J. Byrne operated a popular Richmond (London suburb) photographic studio during the late 19th century. He specialized in photographing children and produced thousands of such portraits, both CDVs and cabinent cards. He was a highly regarded photographer and phoographed not only the English royal children, bit the Queen, Prince of Wales, anf Kaiser Wilhelm II as well. We note a fascinating article that he wrote for The Harmsworth Magazine (1898-99) in which he describes his career as a child photographer including the technique he used to photograph thousands of children in his studio. He produced both CDVs and Cabinet cards. His portraits include many traditional shots as well as a variety of more artistic portaits.

W.J. Byrne (1843?-19??)

We have little personal information on Byne. We know that he was born about 1843. He for some reason enlisted in the Italian Army in 1859 in the final push toward unification. We do not know when or why he first became interested in photography, but he apparently began almost as soon as he returned from Italy. He says that his artistic disposition orinented gim to photigraphy which in the 1860s was still in its infancy. He did not set out to specialize in children, but found photographing them especially appealing as his career developed. We know that he was operating a studio at least by the 1870s. He seems to have been most active as a photographer from the 1870s-90s. He was an extremely well regarded photographer as he received commissions from the royal family. He apparently photographed almost all the royal children in White Lodge, Windsor Castele, and other locations. Although Byrne's special love is child photographt, his career wasc not limited to children. Hec photographed many of the luminaries of the day, including Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales (Edward VIII), and Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Studio

Byrne operated a popular Richmond (London suburb) photographic studio during the late 19th century. He specialized in photographing children and produced thousands of such portraits. A HBC reader tells usv that he has copies of both CDV and cabinent card portraits produced by Byrne. Unfortunately most are undated. Our reader believes that many are from the 1880s although there may be a few taken as early as the 1870s. Bryne had his studio stocked with toys that could amuse children having their portraits taken. When a mother arrived with her child, she would be shown a large selection of portraits showing many varied poses which she could use to select the pose and format that she wanted "for her bairn".

Format

Byrne produced both CDVs and cabinent cards. We are at this time somewhat uncertain about the popularity of these two formats. We had thought that a photographer either produced one or the other of the two formats. Apparently some, perhaps most, photographers offered both formats. We thought that most people would prefer the larger cabinent cards. We also thought that the CDVs continued to be chosen because they were cheaper. We note, however, that some wealthy families continued to have CDVs made even though cabinent cards were available. With such families, clearly the small additional cost of a cabinent card would nit have influenced their decission. A good example here is a wealthy English family. We wonder if the fact that the family began having CDVs made before cabinent cards were available influenced their decissioin to crontinue having CDVs made even when cabinent cards had becoime available.

Magazine Article: Little Darlings

We note a fascinating article, "Little Darlings" about Byrne that appeared in The Harmsworth Magazine (Monthly Pictorial ) Volume 1 - 1898-99 in which he describes his career as a child photographer including the technique he used to photograph thousands of children in his studio. The article was written by Somers J. Summers and illustrated with some of W.J. Byrne's favorite portraits. We note the subtitle, "Half a million photographs of children". We know he took thousands of photographs of children. Is it possible that he took 0.5 million? If he had a career of 40 years, that would mean that he took 12,500 photographs annually or 34 every day. Given his appraoch to taking a portrait, this seems an improbably high number. The aricle provides fascinating details on Byrne's career and on his appoach to taking portraits of children.

Approach

Some of the suggestions that Byrne made to parents is not to dress the children in clothes with which they were unfamilar or in which they felt uncomfortable. He also suggested that they let the child's hair fall natuarally. He had a selection of toys for the children to play with and would allow the children to play a while begin to feel comfortable before taking their portrait. Sometimes he evcen played with them a while himself. He also advised mothers not to practice a photographic setting with the children.

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Created: May 1, 2003
Last updated: May 1, 2003