View from the top of Government House looking towards Campbell’s Wharf on the west side of Circular Quay, Sydney, 1858.

A$5,000 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Large format albumen print, 190 x 270 mm, in a specially prepared mount with a translucent backing sheet and cedar frame designed for viewing in a Polyrama Panoptique (see below); the cedar frame bears an early inscription in ink: Campbell s Wharf ; the print is a little faded and has scattered foxing and a few small sections of surface loss caused by insect damage, but otherwise has miraculously survived intact in spite of its vulnerable format; the frame is in original condition. This view of Campbell s Wharf is one of the eleven sections that comprised William Blackwood s celebrated photographic panorama of Sydney Harbour, taken from the top of Sydney s Government House in mid 1858. The present example was published in: Masterpieces of Australian Photography . Paddington, NSW : Josef Lebovic Gallery, 1989, #2 (illustrated p. 9) A simple albumen print of this very early Sydney view would be considered rare in its own right; what makes the present example of even greater interest, however, is the fact that it was specially prepared at the time for viewing in a domestic optical device, most likely a Polyrama Panoptique. This device had been invented in France by Pierre Henri Armand Leford in 1849 and was marketed throughout the 1850s. It resembled a miniature panorama: the viewer looked through a lens at a thin paper transparency inside (in this case, the albumen print on very thin paper with its translucent backing sheet); by means of a shutter, the viewer could then illumin

• Binding: Hardcover

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