Unidentified photographer / artist
1864, July-October
On carte-de-visite backgrounds and properties

Magazine page
Google Books
Published in "Photography" in "The Quarterly Review", Volume 116, No. 232, Article, VII, July & October, 1864, p.515
 
We have before us a carte by one of the first photographers in London. The background is a magnificent view from the terrace of an Italian garden. Upon the said terrace is a Kidderminster carpet; upon the carpet is a cane-bottomed chair; and upon the chair is a widow lady, sitting bolt upright, without her bonnet, and with her back to the view. Another artist has a fancy for portraying the distinguished men of the day; and one of his favourite conceptions of the scenes in which statesmen may reasonably be looked for, is the base of a cliff upon an iron-bound coast, where they may be seen balancing themselves upon the apex of a jagged rock without their hats. In fact, if a foreigner were to draw his conclusions concerning England and the English from a collection of cartes de visite, he would infer it to be a country abounding in terraces, gardens, lakes, and wild sea-shores, in which the inhabitants might generally be seen sitting in the open air uncovered, looking away from the view, or playing hide-and-seek (at the manifest risk of their lives) behind curtains attached to pillars which, for some unexplained reason, were generally erected upon the brinks of tremendous precipices. If the abolition of the carte de f isite were desirable for no other reason, it would be to get rid of this deplorable partnership between the photographer and the scene-painter.
 
LL/34452