Artwork
Guy Little Theatrical Photographs
Guy Little Theatrical Photographs is a photographic photography by the Impressionist artist London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company. It dates from 1865 and is held in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The image is an 1865 photographic portrait produced for the popular Victorian “carte de visite” market.
About this work
This is a photo from 1865. It shows how actors posed for small visiting cards. Both men and women sat for these pictures in costume or plain clothes.
Albumen prints on stiff card were the rage in the 1860s. Collectors filled albums with these tiny portraits. Later the larger cabinet cards took over.
Look up the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Overview
The image is an 1865 photographic portrait produced for the popular Victorian “carte de visite” market. Small in size, it captures a theatrical performer—male or female—posed either in costume or everyday attire, reflecting the era’s custom of issuing miniature portrait cards for personal exchange and collection.
Subject & Meaning
The sitter is presented as a representative of the theatrical world, embodying the public’s fascination with stage personalities. By displaying actors in both costume and ordinary dress, the photograph offers a glimpse into how performers were marketed to audiences, serving both as personal mementos and as promotional material for their stage personas.
Technique & Style
Created as an albumen print, the photograph was produced from a glass negative onto a paper coated with egg‑white emulsion, then adhered to a stiff card bearing the photographer’s imprint. The resulting image is sharp, with a smooth tonal range typical of mid‑nineteenth‑century studio work, and conforms to the standardized dimensions of cartes de visite.
History & Provenance
The carte originated in a larger assemblage of Victorian visiting cards and cabinet cards that were later stripped from their original backs and bound into albums by solicitor Guy Tristram Little (d. 1953). Little, a collector of ephemera and executor of Gabrielle Enthoven’s theatrical estate, bequeathed the albums to the Victoria and Albert Museum, where they now form part of the museum’s Theatre Collections.
Artist & collection
Artist
London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company
They snapped portraits for London’s theater crowd in the 1800s, turning actors and dancers into instant celebrities.
