Guy Little Theatrical Photograph

Ellen Terry, one of the era’s most renowned performers, is depicted in full costume as Imogen, highlighting the visual splendor of Shakespearean staging. The portrait serves both as a record of her interpretation of the character and as a promotional image for the production, offering contemporary audiences a glimpse of theatrical fashion and performance style.

The photograph is an albumen print produced from a glass negative, a common method for ‘cartes de visite’ and later ‘cabinet cards’ in the 19th century. The image is mounted on a stiff card, typical of the period’s portraiture, and displays the crisp detail and tonal range characteristic of albumen printing, emphasizing costume texture and facial expression.

Originally part of a series of cartes de visite and cabinet cards, the print was removed from its original backing and bound into albums by collector Guy Tristram Little (d. 1953). Little, a solicitor and avid collector of ephemera, bequeathed his assembled photographic archive to the V&A, where it now forms part of the museum’s Theatre Collections.

During the Victorian era, photography emerged as a novel means of preserving theatrical imagery, supplementing traditional portraiture. Actors and actresses frequently commissioned such images for personal and public distribution, first as small visiting‑card‑sized cartes de visite and later as larger cabinet cards, before the rise of postcards in the 1890s shifted public taste.