QUEEN VICTORIA / ANONYMOUS PHOTOGRAPHER

QUEEN VICTORIA / ANONYMOUS PHOTOGRAPHER | Hunting trophies, Scottland 1859 | 4 Salt paper prints, albumenized, and autographic letter by Queen Victoria to Sir George Cornewall Lewis, 17,6 x 22,6 cm, all items in perfect condition 1: 11,7 x 15,3 cm, annotated by Queen Victoria in black ink “2 Stags shot by the Prince of Wales – Sept. 30 1859 – Balmoral” 2: 15,1 x 11,3 cm, annotated by Queen Victoria in black ink “Stag shot by the Prince Consort on Carrop Hill. Oct:1-1859” 3: 13,1 x 9,9 cm, oval cut, annotated by Queen Victoria in black ink “Stag shot by the Prince Consort on Little Craigliadh. Oct 3-1859” 4: 15,2 x 11,3 cm, annotated by Queen Victoria in black ink “Stag shot by the Prince Consort on Feilhorst. Oct: 5.1859. Horn measured 24 inches in width & 35 in length” 5: Handwritten and dated letter by Queen Victoria to Sir George Cornewall Lewis, 17,6 x 22,6 cm, head with the gold embossed emblem of the royal house, “Oct. 22.1859. Remembering the interest Sir G. Lewis took in the Stags during his short stay in our dear Highlands, the Queen thinks he may not dislike receiving these photographs of the best Heads of the Deer killed in our forest this year – and therefore send him these Impressions. We saw nine of these antlers and a very large one killed the day Sir G. Lewis left Balmoral. The Queen has written the date at the back” LITERATURE S. F. Spira, Photographs from the Queen, in: Kathleen Collins (ed.), Shadow and Substance: Essays on the History of Photography. In Honor of Heinz K. Henisch, University of Michigan, Amorphous Institute Press 1990, p. 119-121. Queen Victoria of Great Britain and Ireland (1819–1901) and her husband Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg (1819–1869) shared an enthusiasm for both photography and hunting. The photographer of these rare photographs is not identified, but was certainly in closest contact with the royal couple, who ran a darkroom at Windsor Castle. The prints were enclosed in a letter written by the Queen to Home Secretary Sir George Cornewall Lewis, also part of the lot. Writing of herself in the third person, as befits her rank, the Queen describes the recent hunting successes of her husband and her eldest son, the heir to the throne Prince Edward of Wales (1841–1910). The heads of a total of 5 stags with imposing antlers are staged lying on their own blanket in front of a building wall; a percussion double rifle can also be seen in the shot with two trophies. The prints are made by the printing-out process, in which light-sensitive salted paper was stretched on a negative and exposed to daylight, finally fixed and coated with albumen. The shooting dates noted on the backs prove, how shortly before the letter was sent, the prints were made – the naturalness with which the royal couple used the then still young photographic medium for daily documentation is astonishing. The valuable objects come from the renowned collection of Siegfried Franz Spira (1924–2007).