Bonhams has an exceptional album of early photography mainly taken by Dudley Charles Fitzgerald de Ros and Alfred Suzanne. The 244 photographs date to the early 1860s and show the family and social circles of de Ros and include the royal family at Windsor where de Ros was an equerry to Prince Albert and then Queen Victoria.It is estimated at £15,000-20,000. The album was discovered recently by the vendor is a small provincial auction house.
The lot lots notes state:
An exceptional album, newly discovered, of early 1860s photographs taken by or relating to the family and social circle of Dudley Charles Fitzgerald de Ros, 24th Baron de Ros, and including many by Alfred Suzanne, the chef of Fitzgerald de Ros' father-in-law Thomas Grosvenor Egerton, 2nd Earl of Wilton. The album sheds new light on these two photographers, both members of the Amateur Photographic Society, and the use of photography in the recording of English society life.
THE MAIN PHOTOGRAPHERS:
Dudley Charles Fitzgerald de Ros, 24th Baron de Ros (1827-1907), son of William FitzGerald de Ros and Lady Georgiana Lennox, was an army officer (who in 1859 was appointed Major in the 1st Regiment of the Life Guards), and Royal courtier serving as equerry to Prince Albert from 1853 to 1861, and subsequently to Queen Victoria, from 1861 to 1874. He was also a noted amateur photographer, elected to the Photographic Society of London in 1857, and the Amateur Photographic Association of which he was elected Vice President in 1862. The Royal Collection Trust owns a fine series of photographs (mostly of members of the Royal family, including Albert and Victoria) taken by Fitzgerald de Ros in 1858-1859, and also a portrait of him taken by Camille Silvy in about 1860. In 1853 he married Lady Elizabeth Egerton, daughter of Thomas Grosvenor Egerton, 2nd Earl of Wilton (1799-1882), whose children Arthur (1833–1885), Katherine (1835–1920), and Alice (1842–1925) all feature in the album, as do his son-in-law, the celebrated cricketer Henry des Voeux, and other family members and friends.
There are 65 photographs attributed to Fitzgerald de Ros, who is identifiable in several of Suzanne's "genre" photographs - see below, and in two cases with photographic equipment, once with camera and stand identified as "Our Artist", and once holding a camera lens. His subjects include 2 views of the chapel at Windsor Castle; the boathouse and dock at Strangford Lough, County Down in Ireland where the Fitzgerald de Ros family had an estate; several regimental and family groups (some with horse and carriage), a good cricket group, and many portrait roundels.
Alfred Suzanne, born in 1829, entered into the service of the Earl of Wilton in the mid-1850s serving as his cook (or "chef de cuisine") until the Earl's death in 1882. As well as ministering "to the delights of the table at his lordship's generous board", Suzanne also "was a musician and an artist, whilst his work as an amateur photographer is worthy of the most unqualified praise. He has indeed gained something like notoriety in this department... It was Suzanne who took the portrait of Fred Archer in his hunting-dress, upon the occasion of the visit of the celebrated jockey to Melton Mowbray, where the Wilton family have their seat" (Charles H. Senn, Practical Gastronomy and Culinary Dictionary, 1892, pp.500-501). Like Fitzgerald de Ros he was a member of the Amateur Photographic Association, exhibiting with them from at least 1862 to 1868, and is also known to have practised in some commercial capacity as a photographer, as carte-de-visite portraits with his name "Suzanne" and location "Melton Mowbray" are known (see V. & A. Museum, website).
There are approximately 105 photographs attributable to Suzanne (including 6 signed in the negative, 2 of which are of the Egerton family home Heaton Hall, Lancashire), in addition to approximately 30 photographs of artworks by him (these signed "S" in pencil). The Suzanne images include fine larger photographs of "genre" (or "living tableaux") images in which Fitzgerald de Ros, his sisters, family and staff are identifiable as "actors". These include women fencing (2), a gypsy encampment (featuring Fitzgerald de Ros with a fiddle), a magician's show (with Fitzgerald de Ros as the magician in front of a table of tricks), a drowned man pulled from the river by two women, apple pickers (2, featuring Fitzgerald de Ros on a ladder, and three female relatives), a travelling medicine man/salesman (Fitzgerald de Ros, standing on a cart surrounded by an audience), boys playing dominoes, and three women gardening.
Other notable images include "The Servants" (playing draughts), "The Grooms" (with carriage and horses), Grey and his sisters with a caged parrot, Earl Wilton and family with dog seated on cobbled pavement, two maids (one writing), an elaborate still life with game and fruit arranged on an outdoor table, landscape with a wooden footbridge over a river, views of Melton (3, including a fine image of a cricket match on the green in front of the church), family or friend groups with some against a cloth backdrop, large portrait of Earl Wilton seated, and his son Arthur standing with top hat and umbrella. Other notable sitters, who recur in groups or as portraits include members of the Craven family (Lady Elizabeth Charlotte Craven having married Arthur Egerton, 3rd Earl of Wilton, in 1858 - includes an unusual close-cropped image of William Craven, Cecil Boothby and Grey all smiling), and the noted cricketer Henry des Voeux (who was married to Earl of Wilton's daughter Alice, including his portrait, but also seated in a good group image against an outdoor cloth backdrop.
OTHER PHOTOGRAPHERS INCLUDE:
H. Lennox (possibly Lord Henry Lennox, elected a member of the Photographic Society of London, or a Lennox related to Fitzgerald de Ros' mother Georgina Lennox, 20 images, mostly portraits taken outside, one sitter identified as Viscount Grey de Wilton, another the Duke of Manchester); O. Forester (6 images, including a view of Melton Mowbray), Sir George Wombwell (1 image, a parrot in a cage placed on a table beside a dog on a chair), André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri (2 small portraits), G. Vivian (1, portrait), Caldesi (probably Leonida Caldesi who was employed by Prince Albert as a photographer in the late 1850s, coinciding with the period Fitzgerald de Ros also took photos of the Royal family, images of both men now held by the Royal Collection Trust, 2 images, a woman on a horse with studio backdrop), Lake (1 image, portrait of a man, possibly Fitzgerald de Ros, holding a camera lens), Heber (1 image, group portrait of 3 young women identified as "Miss Coventrys", one possibly the "Miss Coventry" photographed by Camille Silvy, see NPG website), Tutor (4, portraits).
Fine Books, Maps & Manuscripts
Bonhams, London
Online, ending 19 June 2025
lot 80. See the full lot description here
Comments
I wish I'd seen this when It was first sold! "Right up my street" as they say. I presume the auction was not on a prominent internet platform or the album was buried amongst other material and not shown or described properly. Nobody would have missed that fine binding! I hope that the album goes to an institution.
It was a singl elot, but wasn't well described. The Bonhams vendor viewed it in person and realised its potential. The quality of the binding alone should have been a clue...
No bids in the end. I wasn't totally surprised as the estimate seemd optimistic, especially given the fading to many prints and the number of images of paintings.