The Disderi Photograph Collection
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The 'Disderi Photograph Collection' comprises a single photograph album containing images of the Rothschild family, their relatives, friends and associates (including financiers and politicians), c.1859-1863. The album contains over 350 photographs, salt-prints and albumen prints, many with ink manuscript titles and occasional dates, and additional notes.
The photographer in many instances is Eugène Disdéri. André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri (1819-1889) was a French photographer who started his photographic career as a daguerreotypist but gained greater fame for patenting his version of the carte de visite, a small photographic image which was mounted on a card. Disdéri, a brilliant showman, made this system of mass-production portraiture world famous.
The Disderi Photograph Collection: the 'Disderi Album', c.1859-1863
000/689, 1 volume
The 'Disderi Photograph Collection' comprises a single photograph album containing images of the Rothschild family, their relatives, friends and associates. The album is bound in brown morocco, lined with royal blue silk, and the initials ‘H.D.’ in gilt metal within a gilt metal border with knotted rope relief.
The album contains over 350 photographs, salt-prints and albumen prints, the majority in the carte du visite format, many of these coated and on unprinted mounts; 31 larger photographs (approx 7 x 5 in), including four with oval blindstamp of Herbert Watkins and two signed on recto in ink Mayer Frères & Pierson. The photographer in many instances is Eugène Disdéri. The imags are variously mounted up to six per page, ink manuscript titles and occasional dates, additional notes in pencil in a presumed later hand.
The album was purchased by Archive from the collection of Erich Sommer, from the Christie's Fine and Rare Photographs sale, South Kensington, 7 May 1999.
List of names of sitters available