Studio portrait of a young girl posed before a painted backdrop with a view of St. Mary’s Cathedral and Sydney Harbour. Sydney, early 1868.

Albumen print photograph, carte de visite format, 100 x 64 mm (mount); verso with imprint (in red) of ‘C. Pickering, Photographic Artist, 612 George Street, Wilshire’s Buildings, Sydney‘; the print has some light surface marks in the upper section, but is otherwise in good condition, as is the mount.

The second St. Mary’s Cathedral (the first had been destroyed by fire in 1865) was designed by William Wardell; construction commenced in 1866 and the foundation stone was laid in December 1868 – at which time the building was by no means complete. Considering that the latest date for a newspaper advertisement for Charles Pickering at his 612 George Street address is from June, 1868, we can only conclude that Pickering’s painted studio backdrop features an artist’s impression of what the completed cathedral was to look like.

This Pickering carte de visite is also a rare 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, James Walker, Croft Brothers, John T. Gorus, and Jonah Roberts.