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Unknown man, formerly known as Sir John Fowler, 1st Bt

3 of 509 portraits by John Jabez Edwin Mayall

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Unknown man, formerly known as Sir John Fowler, 1st Bt

by John Jabez Edwin Mayall
oil over albumen print, circa 1865
13 7/8 in. x 10 1/2 in. (352 mm x 267 mm)
Purchased, 1987
Primary Collection
NPG P326

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

This portraitback to top

For this large photograph, which was probably taken after the opening of the Metropolitan Railway in January 1863, Fowler sat to Mayall, the leading London portrait photographer. The portrait combines a somewhat incongruous studio backdrop of a village scene with the parapet of a bridge and a length of railway track. The portrait is hand-coloured, an 'extra' offered by many of the commercial firms, and housed in an elaborate gilt frame in emulation of the large-format miniature paintings favoured by the Victorians.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Rogers, Malcolm, Camera Portraits, 1989 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 20 October 1989 - 21 January 1990), p. 81 Read entry

    As a civil engineer Fowler devoted his life to the railways, and he is best known for his Pimlico bridge, the first railway bridge across the Thames in London, the development (from 1853) of the Metropolitan Railway system, and (with Sir Benjamin Baker) the Forth railway bridge (1883-90), probably the most remarkable piece of engineering to be carried out in the nineteenth century, and one which earned Fowler his baronetcy.

    For this photograph, probably taken after the opening of the Metropolitan Railway in January 1863, Baker sat to the American-born photographer, Mayall, who had once been assistant to the daguerreotypist Claudet. A highly successful businessman, his mass-produced royal photographs did much to popularize the carte-de-visite format. In this large photograph Mayall combines a somewhat incongruous studio backdrop of a village scene with the parapet of a bridge and a length of railway track, emblems of Fowler's profession. Hand colouring was an 'extra' offered by many of the commercial photographic firms, and shows them consciously emulating the large-format portrait-miniature paintings favoured by the Victorians.

  • Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 226

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Events of 1865back to top

Current affairs

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson is the first female to be awarded a doctor's licence. She is also involved in collecting signatures for the Manchester Suffrage Committee, the first suffrage organisation, formed this year. John Stuart Mill was also elected to parliament this year on the platform of women's suffrage.
Palmerston dies in October, and is replaced as leader of the Liberal government by his Foreign Secretary, Lord Russell.

Art and science

Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland is published, inspired by Carroll's relationship (as Oxford don Charles Dodgson) with his friend Henry George Liddell's daughter Alice.
Matthew Arnold publishes the first series of Essays in Criticism, a defining text in the development of English literature as an academic discipline.

International

In the American civil war, Robert E. Lee surrenders the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant, leading to the surrender of the Confederacy's remaining field armies. A few days later, US President Abraham Lincoln is shot dead by Confederate sympathiser John Wilkes Booth. Later this year slavery is officially abolished after years of fierce campaigning. In response, the first branch of the Ku Klux Klan is founded on Christmas Eve.

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