Cabinet card portrait of an European woman

Title

Creator

G R Lambert & Company

Year/Period

25 March 1901

Region

Singapore

Object Type

cabinet photographs

Material

photographic paper, paper (fiber product), ink

Technique

photographic processes, photographic printing techniques

Dimension

Image size: 14.6 x 10.3 cm,
Frame size: 16.7 x 10.7 cm

Accession No.

1994-05188

Collection of

National Museum of Singapore

The 1860s saw the emergence of inexpensive portraiture for the masses in a small format known as the ‘carte-de-visite’, the ancestor of modern-day name cards. These consisted of an albumen print pasted on to a cardboard mount approximately 6 x 10 cm (2.5 x 4 in) in size. The so-called ‘cartomania’ originated in London and Paris and soon became popular with all strata of society. Famous people, artworks and exotic faraway places were some of the subjects reproduced onto ‘cartes-de-visite’ and eagerly collected by the public. By the 1870s, however, the carte-de-visite was replaced by the larger cabinet card (seen here) as the ‘card of choice’ among the public.