Studio portrait of Andrew Sloan, seated and holding a book. Geelong, Victoria, c.1875.

Albumen print photograph, carte de visite format, 102 x 63 mm (mount); recto of mount with a fully contemporary inscription in ink identifying the sitter as ‘Andrew Sloan’; verso with back mark of ‘Harvey & Dunden, Corner Portrait Gallery, Moorabool St., Geelong’; some very light foxing to the print and the mount.

We are confident this is Andrew Sloan (1858-1922), who was born in Victoria to a Scottish immigrant from Ayrshire, John Sloan, and his wife Annie Marion (Morgan) Sloan. The Sloans appear to have resided at Anakie, between Bacchus Marsh and Geelong, and later Lovely Banks, north of Geelong, before relocating with their children to the Pyramid Hill district in north central Victoria. Andrew died at Cohuna in 1922 and is buried in the Pyramid Hill cemetery.

See: https://www.geni.com/people/Andrew-Sloan/6000000176441014823

In this portrait, Andrew Sloan appears to be a very self-assured late adolescent, probably 16 or 17 years old. Harvey & Dunden operated their Moorabool Street photographic studio from early 1871 until the end of 1877, after which Harvey continued in business under his own name.