[Photo Album]: Illuminated Victorian Album Embellished with Original Artwork

Great Britain, 1870. Hardcover. Very Good. Quarto. Measuring 13" x 9.75". Full brown morocco, gilt, with two heavy locking gilt clasps at foredge, and all edges gilt. Contains 30 thick card leaves with 29 black and white or sepia toned photographs measuring around 3½" x 2½", without captions. 13 leaves include original paintings and 14 leaves are unembellished. Very good album with repaired hinges, rubbing, internal repairs, and some foxing; with fine illustrations and photographs.

An impressive album consisting of 29 photographs, magnificently embellished with accomplished watercolor paintings, compiled by a British family around 1870. The album begins with a lovely title page featuring a painting of alternating flowers and leaves that spell out "AHMR." The initials "AHMR" also appear on the front cover. It could mean "At Her Majesty's Request," but we make no claim this was created for the Queen. Paintings include a large hummingbird holding a wooden frame wrapped with vines, spider webs, butterflies, and cherubs, among others. The paintings are used as frames for family portraits seen throughout the album. The subjects included are fashionably dressed British upper class folk, some posed with books, in uniform, as couples, and one dapper gentleman with a walking stick. A labor-intensive undertaking, it is clearly unfinished, with one drawing in pencil, some frames without photographs, and a few of the pages completely blank between finished pages.

An intricately designed family album depicting portraiture of a Victorian British family.