Photographic portrait of businessman Edward Neale Wigg, eldest son of Adelaide bookseller E. S. Wigg. December, 1868.

Albumen print photograph, carte de visite format, 104 x 64 mm (mount), recto with a contemporary caption in ink identifying the sitter as ‘Edw. N. Wigg’ and dated December 27 1868; verso with the illustrated back mark of Adelaide’s most prestigious photographer, Townsend Duryea, and contemporary note in pencil ‘Son of E. S. Wigg’; both the print and mount are in very good condition.

A fine and very possibly unrecorded vignette portrait of a bespectacled and bookish-looking Edward Neale Wigg at the age of 21, taken relatively soon after he had commenced working in his father’s Adelaide bookshop, and prior to his marriage to Jessie Davidson in 1871.

Prominent Australian businessman Edward Neale Wigg (1847-1927) was the eldest son of Adelaide bookseller E. S. Wigg. Born in New Zealand, he was educated at J. L. Young’s Adelaide Educational Instituition, where he was an outstanding scholar. He entered his father’s business on leaving school in 1867, and the firm then became known as E. S. Wigg & Son. Following his father’s death he became head of this extremely successful enterprise and remained so until 1910, when he sold his interest in the business to his in-laws, the Davidson family. From the late 1880s on, Wigg was a major mining investor. He served as a director of Broken Hill Proprietary Ltd. from 1890 to 1906, and as its Chairman of Directors, 1897-1899. He was also a director of the Lady Evelyn gold mine at Coolgardie, the Ivanhoe mine at Kalgoorlie, the Bon Accord Cape York Peninsula Syndicate, and the Mount Lyell Mining Co. He bequeathed most of substantial estate to the University of Adelaide for medical research.