Studio portrait of a married couple, the husband wearing his army uniform. Melbourne, circa 1915.

Sepia-toned platinum print photograph, 180 x 130 mm (oval format), on its original card mount with the imprint of ‘T. Humphrey & Co., 261 Collins St., Melbourne’; the print is in superb condition; the mount has some light foxing along the right-hand edge but is otherwise clean.

Alice Mills, wife of photographer Tom Humphrey, was advertising her own studio in the Centreway, 261 Collins Street – the same address as the Humphrey studio – from September 1914 right through the war years. It is quite possible that she took this beautiful portrait, as the composition and lighting reflect her artistic sensibility. Alice had certainly previously worked in Humphrey’s studio, from 1899 until 1904; she would go on to practise commercial photography in Melbourne under her own name up into the late 1920s, earning a reputation as one of Melbourne’s premier portrait photographers and colourists in the first part of the twentieth century.