Studio portraits of a young man and woman, possibly siblings. Adelaide, 1865-67.

I. [Portrait of a young woman standing beside a chair]. Albumen print photograph, carte de visite format, 104 x 64 mm (mount); verso with back mark of ‘Frank Farndell, Photographer, 167 Rundle St. East, Adelaide, S.A.’; the print has a surface scratch near the centre of the image which crosses the sitter’s face; mount in good condition.

II. [Portrait of a young man standing beside a table on which rests his top hat]. Albumen print photograph, carte de visite format, 104 x 64 mm (mount); verso with back mark of ‘F. Farndell, Photographist, 167 Rundle st. East, Adelaide, S.A.’, and a fully contemporary inscription in pencil ‘Richard Lonn[xxxxx] for Mr. Foord’; the print and mount are in excellent condition.

This pair of lovely portraits was sourced together, so we strongly suspect the sitters are at least from the same family, and quite possibly siblings. They look around 18 to 20 years old, the man perhaps slightly older than the woman. Note that on the back mark of what is probably the earlier of the two cartes (the portrait of the young man), Farndell refers to himself more formally as ‘F. Farndell’ and uses the already quaint term ‘photographist’ to describe his profession; on the later carte, he calls himself ‘Frank’ and uses the more up-to-date term ‘photographer’.

We are not certain of who ‘Mr. Foord’ might be, although one possibility is that it was the same ‘Mr Foord’ who was postmaster at Findon in the mid 1860s.