Studio portrait of a gentleman standing before a painted backdrop of Sydney Harbour. Sydney, circa 1864.

CROFT BOTHERS

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Albumen print photograph, carte de visite format, 98 x 62 mm (mount); verso with imprint (in black) of 'Croft Bros., Photographic Artists, 33 South Head Road, Sydney', and an indistinct name in pencil; both the print and mount are in excellent condition. A rare example of the magnificent painted panorama of Sydney Harbour that adorned Croft Brothers' studio near Hyde Park. The view looks east along the harbour, with Fort Denison on the left. This studio was one of several in Sydney in the early 1860s - including those of John Yates, William Hetzer, James Walker, Charles Pickering, and John T. Gorus - to use a harbour vista as a backdrop. The firm of Croft Brothers were apparently "brothers" in name only: the business seems to have been a partnership of William Croft junior (b. 1834) - the principal - and his father, William senior. The two Williams both trained as artists in Devon before turning to photography. They briefly operated a studio in Falmouth before emigrating to New Zealand, where they spent a short time in Auckland in 1860. They then moved on to Australia, arriving in Sydney on the Lord Worsley in December 1860. Their first Sydney studio was at 154 South Head Road (towards the bottom end of what is now Oxford Street). This studio was fully operational by April 1861. The dates of 1863-65 given for Croft Brothers by Davies & Stanbury (Mechanical Eye in Australia) and the DAAO are patently incorrect; the error is also repeated by the AGNSW in its catalogue entries.A Croft Brothers ambrotype in the SLNSW (MIN 584) - a copy of a portrait of Sydney merchant Samuel Cohen made shortly after his death - is dated 12 November 1861, and has the partnership's first Australian studio address of 154 South Head Road.The first newspaper advertisements under the name Croft Brothers were published in the classifieds section of theSydney Morning Herald on 14 September 1861. These appeared as a sequence of four consecutive notices, all with the 154 South Head Road address. The advertisements emphasised the democratic nature of the studio, offering 'Portraits in every style, size and price'; one even spruiked the studio as 'The People's Portrait Rooms', probably to set the business apart from two of its main competitors, Freeman Brothers and Hetzer, whose studios tended to attract a clientele drawn from Sydney's social elite. Croft Brothers later moved into premises opposite Hyde Park at 33 South Head Road - which is where the carte de visite offered here was taken. In June 1865 the Crofts closed this studio and returned to England, having sold most of their negatives to their successors, Moore and Parkes. Back in England, William junior continued to work as a photographer and artist in Torquay and later in Lewisham, southeast London. Seller Inventory # 43891

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Title: Studio portrait of a gentleman standing ...