Studio portrait of a young gentleman posed before a painted backdrop with a view of Sydney Harbour. Sydney, 1866.

Albumen print photograph, carte de visite format, 99 x 63 mm (mount); verso with imprint of ‘J. Roberts, Photographer, 328 George Street, Sydney‘; both the print and mount are in excellent condition.

Jonah Roberts was only briefly active as a professional photographer in Sydney during the year 1866, before he relocated to Victoria and set up a studio in Geelong. Cartes de visite with his distinctive Sydney back mark are seldom encountered. Worthy of note is the fact that he describes himself as a “photographer”, and not “photographic artist” – the usual nomenclature of the time. In addition to its scarcity as a Roberts carte de visite, it is also a desirable example of one of the several different painted panoramas of Sydney Harbour that adorned a number of Sydney studios in the 1860s, including those of John Yates, William Hetzer, Croft Brothers, Charles Pickering, and John T. Gorus.