Curio

State Library of New South Wales
Mrs Penhall, nee Margaret Balfour (in a wig) with her daughter

Mrs Penhall, nee Margaret Balfour (in a wig) with her daughter

1873
Glass photonegative

Dressmaker Margaret Penhall and her eldest daughter Martha have been photographed smartly dressed and well-groomed and then re-photographed in an unkempt state. Possibly the images were reversed and used for advertising by the studio as an example of their ‘before-and-after’ skill, but this pair of portraits, on consecutively numbered photographic plates, remains a puzzle. Mrs Penhall is pregnant with her third child, a few months after losing her second.

From Illustrated Australian News, Saturday 31 March 1888

The instrument we are told, cannot lie, but photography, although universally adopted, has not proved the powerful rival to the artist that was at first anticipated. There are probably more real artists at the present time, notwithstanding the invention alluded to, than at any other period of history Photography will never supplant the painter. It will rather act as an auxiliary to his genius, and elevate his art still higher in the estimation of the educated and refined. The reason of this is obvious. Under any circumstance a photo must of necessity appear mechanical. Even retouching will not wholly obliterate the formal and set pose of the original. In a painting the artist grasps every point to suit his purpose. He first seizes the spirit of his subject, and then proceeds to work out the details, which are made subordinate to the raison d’être, with a vraisemblance of nature that in skilful hands far surpasses in beauty and truthfulness — having regard to the subject — the operation of any mechanical contrivances. [Illustrated Australian News, Saturday 31 March 1888, p2S]