“Contributions Solicited” : carte de visite album “opener”. Geelong, early 1870s.

Albumen print, carte de visite format, 101 x 64 mm (mount); verso with back mark in green of ‘Harvey & Dunden, Corner Portrait Gallery, Moorabool St., Geelong’; foxing to both sides.

Cartes de visite of this type – usually comprising a short rhyming verse decorated with any one of a multitude of different pictorial themes – were printed as novelty items, to be placed as a frontispiece in the family’s or collector’s photograph album. The witty verse on this particular example reads:

‘Here’s room for all those that we love / Here’s room for all those that love us / Here’s room for all those that love them / that love those / that love us.’ Across the rhyme, at a jaunty angle, is printed ‘Contributions Solicited’. The text is set within a border of flowers and butterflies.