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| James Good Tunny Portrait of James Warburton Begbie, physician and author ca. 1855 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Camille Silvy Carte-de-visite portrait of an unknown woman ca. 1860-70 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
Portrait
She has no need to fear the fall
Of harvest from the laddered reach
Of orchards, nor the tide gone ebbing
From the steep beach.
Nor hold to pain's effrontery
Her body's bulwark, stern and savage,
Nor be a glass, where to forsee
Another's ravage.
What she has gathered, and what lost,
She will not find to lose again.
She is possessed by time, who once
Was loved by men.
– Louise Bogan (1897-1970)
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| Anonymous photographer Carte-de-visite portrait of Princess Alice second daughter of Queen Victoria 1861 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Thomas Rodger Portrait of an unknown boy ca. 1861 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Victor Albert Prout Portrait of Lady Anne Duff 1863 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Victor Albert Prout Portrait of Miss Stapleton, out walking 1863 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
To a Print of Queen Victoria
I advise rest; the farmhouse
we dug you up in has been
modernized, and the people
who hung you as their ikon
against the long passage wall
are underground – Incubus
and excellent woman, we
inherit the bone acre
of your cages and laws. This
dull green land suckled at your
blood's frigor Angelicanus,
crowning with a housewife's tally
the void of Empire, does not
remember you – and certain
bloody bandaged ghosts rising
from holes of Armageddon
at Gallipoli or Sling
Camp, would like to fire a shot
through the gilt frame. I advise
rest, Madam; and yet the tomb
holds much that we must travel
barely without. Your print – 'from
an original pencil
drawing by the Marchioness
of Granby, March, eighteen nine-
ty seven . . .' Little mouth, strong
nose and hooded eye – they speak
of half-truths my type have slung
out of the window, and lack
and feel the lack too late. Queen,
you stand most for the time of
early light, clay roads, great trees
unfelled, and the smoke from huts
where girls in sack dresses
stole butter . . . The small rain spits
today. You smile in your grave.
– James K. Baxter (1926-1972)
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| William Carrick and John MacGregor Portrait of Jessie Carrick (photographer's mother) ca. 1860 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| William Carrick and John MacGregor Portrait of Jessie Carrick (photographer's sister) ca. 1860 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| William Carrick and John MacGregor William Carrick, his mother, his brother George and sister Jessie ca. 1860 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| William Carrick and John MacGregor William Carrick, his mother, his brother George and sister Jessie ca. 1860 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
Self-Portrait, 1969
He's still young –; thirty, but looks younger –
or does he? . . . In the eyes and cheeks, tonight,
turning in the mirror, he saw his mother, –
puffy; angry; bewildered . . . Many nights
now, when he stares there, he gets angry: –
something unfulfilled there, something dead
to what he once thought he surely could be –
Now, just the glamour of habits . . .
Once,
instead,
he thought insight would remake him, he'd reach
– what? The thrill, the exhilaration
unravelling disaster, that seemed to teach
necessary knowledge . . . became just jargon.
Sick of being decent, he craves another
crash. What reaches him except disaster?
– Frank Bidart
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| Anonymous photographer Dr K.M. Downie 1870 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Anonymous photographer Mr Hackett and John Clark, Hyères 1875 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| James Esson Self-portrait ca. 1880 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| James Cox Portrait of Maud Thomson at Invertrossachs 1881 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Anonymous photographer Jessie Marion King (Mrs Ernest Archibald Taylor) in a field ca. 1895 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)