George Washington Wilson
n.d.
Silver Strand - Loch Katrine

Carte de visite
Paul Frecker
A topographical carte-de-visite showing Loch Katrine in the Trossachs of Scotland. The scenery of the area around the loch was immortalized by Sir Walter Scott in his Lady of the Lake (1810), which did much to attract Victorian tourists to the Scottish Highlands. Once the railways had opened up the area, the region experienced a vast influx of tourists, all of whom wanted photographic souvenirs.
 
Photographed by George Washington Wilson of Aberdeen, identified recto in the lower margin. The same, or a very similar view, was also available as a stereoview.
 
Wilson made his first visit to the Trossachs with George Walker in 1859, and the two men seem to have thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Walker tells how they 'bathed in the loch, in spite of the monster pike we saw, and we hid ourselves in the bracken, which was in many places eight feet in height'. The midges they disturbed attacked Walker with ferocity and brought his face and neck out in bright red swellings. He was puzzled that they left Wilson entirely alone and wondered if it was 'in consequence of the fumes of chloroform and collodion with which his clothes were saturated'' [quoted in Roger Taylor's George Washington Wilson: Artist and Photographer, 1981].
 
LL/18597