Dimensions
256 x 276 x 29mm
In the early nineteenth century, likenesses in profile, or silhouettes, sometimes delicately highlighted in gold were all ordinary folk could afford. The Frith family, John, his three children, Frederick, Henry Albert, and Letitia, travelled the British Isles inviting the "gentry and residents" to sit for these "highly finished" portraits. This art form was overtaken by the camera and photographic portraiture. The younger Friths emigrated to Australia and New Zealand where they adapted to this new medium with the same skills, producing a record of nineteenth century Tasmania, Victoria and New Zealand and their peoples, both indigenous and the newly settled. This is the story of that transition.
