19thC; Hawarden C, D 339, 5 Princes Gardens, balcony, Isabella Grace, Henry Brougham Loch, c. 1861

Sepia photograph, mounted on green card, showing a young woman and a bearded man on a balcony.

Given by Lady Clementina Tottenham

From departmental notes

'Clementina, Lady Hawarden (Untitled) Photographic Study (or) Study from Life (D.339) c.1861 5 Princes Gardens, exterior: balcony (seen through open right window): Isabella Grace (right profile) and Henry Brougham Loch (later 1st Baron Loch) (left profile), holding top hat; both standing by balustrade. Houses (under construction) south side of Princes Gardens in background. 112 x 81 mm PH 457-1968:595 Literature: Microfilm: 3.19.543 Also:ed. Graham Ovenden, Clementina Lady Hawarden, 1974, p.44. The Golden Age of British Photography, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1984. The balcony overlooking Princes Gardens was often used by Lady Hawarden as a setting for photography. By photographing through the open window she gave some of these images a dramatic thrust and enhanced the illusion that the balcony is a small detached platform floating above the ground. This effect comes to the fore in this photograph, which is of Lady Hawarden's eldest daughter and her cousin, Henry Brougham Loch, 1st Lord Loch (1827-1900). In the distance, across Princes Gardens, the houses on the south side of the square are still under construction, fixing the date to the summer of 1861. [Rate books. Information courtesy Mrs Jeanne Pingree, formerly Archivist, Imperial College, University of London.J Though Loch is not identified by an inscription on this or any other photograph in the Hawarden collection, his identity has been established through an inscribed carte-de-visite by Camille Silvy. [Photograph Collection, DP&D, V&A Museum. Pressmark X21, 850.J] In 1861, Loch was a celebrity. A distinguished soldier, he was attached as private secretary to Lord Elgin's embassies to China and Japan from 1857 to 1860, when he survived being taken prisoner by the Chinese during the Second Opium War. [Dictionary of National Biography].J He appears in a photograph by Felice Beato as part of a group in the grounds of the fort at Pehtang. [Reproduced in Isobel Crombie, 'China 1860: A Photographic Album by Felice Beato', History of Photography, 2:36.] Loch appears in more of Lady Hawarden's photographs than anyone outside her immediate family, indicating that they were close friends. As a child, she lived with the Loch family during the period when her parents were away in the Caribbean. [See Gordon Loch, The Family of Loch, 1934.] This effect comes to the fore in this photograph, which is of Lady Hawarden's eldest daughter and her cousin, Henry Brougham Loch, 1st Lord Loch (1827-1900). In the distance, across Princes Gardens, the houses on the south side of the square are still under construction, fixing the date to the summer of 1861. [Rate books. Information courtesy Mrs Jeanne Pingree, formerly Archivist, Imperial College, University of London.J Though Loch is not identified by an inscription on this or any other photograph in the Hawarden collection, his identity has been established through an inscribed carte-de-visite by Camille Silvy. [Photograph Collection, DP&D, V&A Museum. Pressmark X21, 850.J In 1861, Loch was a celebrity. A distinguished soldier, he was attached as private secretary to Lord Elgin's embassies to China and Japan from 1857 to 1860, when he survived being taken prisoner by the Chinese during the Second Opium War. [Dictionary of National Biography].J He appears in a photograph by Felice Beato as part of a group in the grounds of the fort at Pehtang. [Reproduced in Isobel Crombie, 'China 1860: A Photographic Album by Felice Beato', History of Photography, 2:36.] Loch appears in more of Lady Hawarden's photographs than anyone outside her immediate family, indicating that they were close friends. As a child, she lived with the Loch family during the period when her parents were away in the Caribbean. [See Gordon Loch, The Family of Loch, 1934.] Though Loch is not identified by an inscription on this or any other photograph in the Hawarden collection, his identity has been established through an inscribed carte-de-visite by Camille Silvy. [Photograph Collection, DP&D, V&A Museum. Pressmark X21, 850.J In 1861, Loch was a celebrity. A distinguished soldier, he was attached as private secretary to Lord Elgin's embassies to China and Japan from 1857 to 1860, when he survived being taken prisoner by the Chinese during the Second Opium War. [Dictionary of National Biography]. He appears in a photograph by Felice Beato as part of a group in the grounds of the fort at Pehtang. [Reproduced in Isobel Crombie, 'China 1860: A Photographic Album by Felice Beato', History of Photography, 2:36.] Loch appears in more of Lady Hawarden's photographs than anyone outside her immediate family, indicating that they were close friends. As a child, she lived with the Loch family during the period when her parents were away in the Caribbean. [See Gordon Loch, The Family of Loch, 1934.] Loch appears in more of Lady Hawarden's photographs than anyone outside her immediate family, indicating that they were close friends. As a child, she lived with the Loch family during the period when her parents were away in the Caribbean. [See Gordon Loch, The Family of Loch, 1934.]'

Reason For Production: Exhibition
Reason For Production: Retail

Hawarden used the balcony on the south side of her house in Princes Gardens in London as an open-air studio, floating in space. She posed her daughter Isabella Grace beside her mother’s cousin, Henry Brougham Loch. This double portrait must date from the summer of 1861, because the houses on the south side of the square are still being built. Virginia Dodier has written that Loch was a celebrity in 1861, because he ‘survived imprisonment by the Chinese during the Second Opium War’.

457:595-1968