Guy Little Theatrical Photograph

The photograph was created using the albumen process, wherein a paper coated with egg white received a silver nitrate sensitization and was exposed from a glass negative. The resulting print was trimmed and affixed to a card bearing the photographer’s imprint, a standard format for cartes de visite and later cabinet cards.

Originally issued as part of a set of cartes de visite, the card was later removed from its backing and placed in an album by Guy Tristram Little (d. 1953). Little, a solicitor and avid collector of photographic ephemera, donated his assemblage to the Victoria and Albert Museum, where it now resides.

During the 1860s the carte de visite craze transformed portrait photography into a social hobby, with actors and actresses frequently posing in everyday attire or stage costume. By the late 1870s the larger cabinet card superseded the smaller format, before both were eclipsed by postcards in the 1890s.