Alfred and Emily Tennyson and their sons Hallam and Lionel
Albumen print, by Oscar Rejlander (1813-1875) - May 1863
Alfred and Emily Tennyson and their sons Hallam and Lionel, 1863, by Oscar Reijlander
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) was Poet Laureate to Queen Victoria. This is one a series of photographs taken by Oscar Rejlander in May 1863 of the Tennyson family at their home Farringford in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight. Alfred and his wife Emily much admired the results. The boys Hallam and Lionel are wearing medieval-style tunics and knickerbockers in a similar shade to their mother's dress, and weekday belts rather than the sashes and stockings they wore for evenings and holidays. Alfred and Emily (nee Sellwood) married in the Oxfordshire village of Shiplake, only a few miles downstream of Reading on the River Thames.
Oscar Rejlander (1813-1875) was a pioneering Swedish photographer. He studied art but became interested in the new medium of photography inspired by the Calotype process invented by Fox Talbot (who set up the world's first commercial photography studio at Reading in 1844). Rejlander produced the portrait photographs for Charles Darwin's book 'The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals'. He was visiting the Isle of Wight in 1863 to collaborate with another photography pioneer, Julia Margaret Cameron.
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