10603.bbb.12

Imprint: John van Voorst, London, 1870.

Small quarto volume in red buckram, gilt edges, with title and cartouche reading 'Fideliter' stamped in gilt on upper board and in blind on lower, measuring 203 x 152 mm, and containing titlepage, 1 p. of introductory text by Wallich, contents list of photographs and 16 head-and-shoulders albumen print portraits of eminent scientists, mounted within printed red rules on stout card. The guttapercha binding has decayed and all leaves are detached, with some wear to the binding also. All prints are considerably faded. George Wallich (1815-1899), the son of the Danish-born botanist Nathaniel Wallich, served as a surgeon in the East India Company's army and later achieved fame as an oceanographer. He was also an accomplished amateur photographer and produced this privately-printed volume as the first in a projected series of photographic portraits of eminent men in various fields. However, no further volumes appear to have been published. In his short introduction to the work, Wallich writes that his intention was to produce straightforward and accurate portraits, unencumbered by the props and style of much contemporary photography: 'The aim of the work being to supply likenesses which shall be both characteristic, free from some errors in taste but too frequently manifest in photographic portaiture, and trustworthy as records of individual feature and expression; it has been considered preferable to forgo the expedients, by means of which it is customary to mask imperfections, rather than incur the risk, however, slight, of impairing a strict fidelity to nature. For the requirements of the Historian or the Historical Painter, the value of this condition has been deemed sufficient to warrant its adoption.'