Victoria and Albert Museum The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund, Museum number: RPS.1374-2017
The photograph was one of a series taken for Charles Darwin's (1809-1882) work 'The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals', 1872, a study into the origins of human expressions. After meeting Darwin in 1871, Rejlander became the main photographer for the project. 'Ginx's Baby' was also commercially successful, and so Rejlander created versions on cartes de visite and cabinet cards. The title for the photograph was taken from a novel about an orphaned boy, by John Edward Jenkins (1838-1910). The polychrome drawing was an enlargement made after the original photogram, date unknown. Rejlander had produced a small, indistinct photograph of a crying baby, but it was too small and poor quality to reproduce, so he redrew it by hand and produced a large coloured drawing. The drawing was then rephotographed, giving it the appearance of a photographic original.
