Mounted on card with photographer's signed ink inscription 'From Life Registered Photograph Copyright Julia Margaret Cameron Freshwater 1869' beneath image with ink title caption below and Colnaghi oval blind-stamp at foot, mount uniformly browned and a little creased and dampstained at lower margin
The sitters were Florence Anson and Mary Ann Hillier. Colin Ford, 'Julia Margaret Cameron, The Complete Photographs' (2003), pp. 458-9. This is the first of four versions of the print made by Cameron, another rectangular (rather than arched top) copy of which is held by the Royal Photographic Society Collection in Bradford. Shortly before her death Cameron gave a print of 'The Kiss of Peace' to her youngest son, with the inscription: 'Dearest Charlie, I give you this Prize Copy of the most beautiful of all my photographs. This is a very splendid print so like a sepia painting that it is difficult to believe that it is a genuine untouched Photograph'.
