Young woman with unkempt hair and averted gaze – an actress? Melbourne, mid 1880s.

Albumen print photograph, cabinet card format, 168 x 114 mm (mount), verso with the imprint of ‘Foster & Martin, Artists & Photographers, 29 & 31 Collins St. East, Melbourne’, and the initials ‘E. H.’ in pencil in a fully contemporary hand; the print has some very light foxing.

An enigmatic portrait of a waif-like woman we think may have been an actress: her hair, expression and clothes all suggest she had herself photographed “in character”.

This cabinet card came from an album compiled by a member of one of the branches of the Handfield family of Melbourne in the second half of the nineteenth century. Three Handfield brothers arrived in Melbourne from Ireland in the 1850s: William Hopton Handfield (m. Isabelle Tatham; the couple had 4 children); Lieutenant Frederick Oliver Handfield (m. Mary Ellen Tatham; the couple had 7 children); Rev. Henry Hewett Paulet Handfield (m. Mary Leigh Tripp; no issue).

William Hopton Handfield (1832-1891), a cricketer of note, became secretary of the Melbourne Cricket Club.