William Carrick
1860s
Studio portrait of a bearded Russian man, a peasant, standing, wearing a 'Moscow hat' and with an overcoat draped over his left shoulder.

Carte de visite
Pitt Rivers Museum
Joan Evans - Donated August 1941, 1941.8.152
 
Publications history
Contemporary publication - This image has been reproduced as an engraving in W. R. S. Ralston, 'A Few Russian Photographs', Good Words, 1 October 1870, p.672, No.11, described by the author in the accompanying article as 'an excellent type of the Russian moujik [meaning 'peasant', as used here]. See how erect he stands. There is nothing of the slave about him, although no doubt when his portrait was taken he was a serf. But serfdom has not made the Russian peasant a cringing being. Except in the presence of his own lord, the serf always bore himself like a free man, standing proudly upright, or stalking behind his plough with the air of a Sarmatian Cincinnatus. His hat is worthy of observation. There are various types of hats in Russia, but his is what is called the Moscow hat[,] a tall brimless cylinder, often resembling that which caricature bestows upon the Irishman, not unfrequently reminding the English tourist of the head-dress worn by the casual scarecrow in his native fields': http://www.luminous-lint.com/app/vexhibit/_THEME_19thc_Illustrations_from_Photographs_01/6/31/15757465215361451243796933 (accessed 27 June 2013). [PG 27/06/2013]
 
Research Notes
This carte de visite has been identified as a photograph by William Carrick, taken from the printed information in Russian and French on the reverse. Carrick's studio is described as being located at '19 petite Morskoi', or No. 19 Malaya Morskaya [literally, '19 Little Morskaya street'], in St. Petersburg. [PG 06/02/2013]
 
William Carrick (1827-1878) was a photographer, of Scottish descent, who opened a studio at 19 Malaya Morskaya (just off Nevsky Prospect), in St. Petersburg, in 1859. He achieved some success as a commercial portrait photographer but ultimately made his name as a photographer of Russian folk scenes, both urban and rural, and of painting. '[B]y the early 1860s he had begun to print card sets of photographs of Russian "types" for sale as souvenirs. He was to continue making and adding to these for the next decade and a half. They include St Petersburg hawkers (raznoschiki) as well as other workers and peasants from both town and country. For a set of […] such images which he had given to the liberal but sickly heir apparent, Grand Duke Nicholas, in 1862, he was presented with a diamond ring. Among those he photographed in the atelier were a boy abacus seller, a milkmaid, a cooper, a glazier, buskers, a knife-grinder, a nurseryman, a glove seller, a chimney sweep, soldiers, and various armed Caucasians in national costume. Often classically posing his models, he gained renown for his evocation of dignity in labour. […] Carrick thus pioneered Russian ethnographic photography, and left a great legacy of hundreds of photographs': Jeremy Howard, 'Carrick, William (1827-1878)', in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online edition), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/40413 (accessed 29 January 2013). For more information on Carrick's life and career, see Felicity Ashbee and Julie Lawson, William Carrrick, 1827-1878 (Edinburgh, 1987); Sergei Petrov, 'William Carrick and Russian Culture', translated and edited by Felicity Ashbee, Scottish Slavonic Review, 5 (1985), pp.72-87; Felicity Ashbee, 'William Carrick: A Scots Photographer in St. Petersburg, 1827-1878', History of Photography, 2/3 (1978), pp.207-222; and Felicity Ashbee, 'The Carricks of St Petersburg', in The Caledonian Phalanx: Scots in Russia (Edinburgh, 1987), pp.90-105. [Philip Grover 29/01/2013]
 
Related image - This photograph shows the same man as appears in [1941.8.142]. [PG 30/01/2013]
 
This man has been identified by Philip Grover as a 'peasant', from a captioned photograph by Carrick of the same individual in a collection elsewhere: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29482804@N06/2930703668/in/set-72157607923976531 (accessed 6 February 2013). [PG 06/02/2013]
 
LL/113144