Ambrotype portrait of Lady Susannah Wilson (Edmeades) Hindmarsh, wife of the first Governor of South Australia, Sir John Hindmarsh. Taken in England, circa 1856; reframed in Melbourne, 1859.

A$11,000 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Quarter-plate ambrotype (wet collodion positive on glass), 100 x 80 mm (sight), in a paper and card mount with oval inset, housed within a colonial gilded timber wall frame with original cover glass (95 x 170 mm); the paper on the back of the frame with an inscription in ink in a refined hand identifying the sitter as Lady Hindmarsh ; when this brown paper backing is partially peeled back, the printed studio label of A. W. Paterson, City Portrait Rooms, 141 Bourke Street East, Melbourne is revealed, affixed to the back of the ambrotype itself (the explanation for the presence of this label is given below); the ambrotype with some peripheral oxidisation (mostly confined to the upper part of the image) and minor crazing to the emulsion, the frame generally well preserved but with some water staining to the paper backing. A unique and unpublished ambrotype portrait of Lady Susannah Wilson (Edmeades) Hindmarsh (1786-1859), wife of Sir John Hindmarsh (1785-1860), first Governor of South Australia (December 1836-July 1838). We believe this portrait was taken around 1856, when Susannah was about 70 years of age, probably in either London or else her hometown of Hove, Sussex. She died in Pimlico, London on 2 April 1859, aged 73 years, and is buried alongside her husband in the grounds of St. Andrews Church in Hove. Lady Hindmarsh left Adelaide in 1841, and never returned to Australia. What then can account for the presence of the studio label of Melbourne photographers Archibald and

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.