Studio portrait of a married couple posed in front of a painted backdrop of an exotic garden. South Melbourne, late 1880s.

Albumen print photograph, cabinet card format, 166 x 107 mm (mount); recto of mount imprinted ‘D. Wood, near Town Hall, South Melbourne’; verso blank; a superb print with beautiful muted tones, in excellent condition; the mount is clean and stable.

The painted backdrop in this cabinet card portrait is quite magnificent – as are a number of others Wood used in his South Melbourne (Emerald Hill) establishment in the 1880s and early 1890s. The scene was possibly inspired by the picturesque St. Vincent Gardens, situated a stone’s throw away from Wood’s studio in Banks Street.