Collection Item
Portrait of Isabel Macpherson c 1870s
Isabel Macpherson, born in 1867, married Robert Aitken, a flour miller.
The portraits of Isabel and her sister Emily are typical of portraits created in China from photographs. Companies such as the Chinese and Oriental Photo & Oil Portrait Co offered full-size portraits in oil, painted from small photographs or cartes de visite forwarded to studios in China where enlarged copies were made.
The completed paintings were shipped to Sydney for collection and payment. While many people took advantage of this, others saw it as producing an inferior product and undercutting local Australian artists.
Collection Item Type:
Oil on paper on canvas
Call Number:
ML 1442
Published date:
c 1870s
On display:
Exhibition Galleries
Copyright Information:
Out of copyright: Creator died before 1955
Please acknowledge: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
Display Location:
Exhibition Galleries
Historical Dates
Started
Saturday, 1 January 1870
Finished
Wednesday, 31 December 1879