Large Australian outdoor gathering, circa 1885

Albumen print photograph, carte de visite format, 61 x 101 mm, verso blank, albumen print in very good condition, the verso of mount with moderate foxing. From a Melbourne family album, this highly unusual outdoor group portrait provides a sharply focused bird’s eye view of a large assembly of well over one hundred men, women and children dressed in their ‘Sunday best’. They are for the most part seated, and the gently sloping patch of cleared ground and wooden fence at top right suggest the photograph may have been taken on the banks of the Yarra.