A child's portrait by Frederick J. Boyes of Derby

Hilary Booth sent me this charming portrait of family member Florrie Swann, taken by Derby photographer Frederick J. Boyes.


Hilary writes: "Florence Swann's mother Harriet Clark was Mary Clark née Porter's first child. We have traced Harriet on the census records until 1901 when she was working at a lunatic asylum in Bristol, unmarried. We have found a marriage record in 1908, so we think Florence Swann was born around 1910? She had a sibling Leslie who was born about 1912. Hopefully we may be able to be more accurate when the next census record is released.


The cabinet card mount is one of Boyes' most common standard designs, used from 1893 until the early to mid-1900s. One interesting feature of Boyes' cabinet card and carte de visite portraits is that he stamped almost all of them with the negative number. Although my portfolio of Boyes portraits is still fairly small, and I only have a few which are accurately dated, this has given me some idea of his output.

Neg # --- Date
4188  --- c.1889-1891
6634  --- c.1893
12538 --- c.1896-1897
14446 --- April 1898
17249 --- c.Nov 1901

Boyes was a particularly accomplished photographer who, although he had a fairly late start in Derby c. 1886, quickly established an excellent reputation for fine quality portraiture. I estimate that by the turn of the century he was taking between 60 and 100 portraits a month (or 2-4 sittings a day). This was, of course, nothing like the 450-500 sittings per month being achieved by W.W. Winter in Midland Road at this time, but then Winter had been much longer established, and was situated in a very favourable location, close to the Derby railway station.


A simple graph of the negative numbers plotted against the estimated or actual date of the portraits in my collection of images shows a fairly good trend (see above). If this trend is then extrapolated forwards, we can estimate an approximate date of c. March-May 1904 for Hilary's portrait with a negative number of 20025. Although I am less confident of this estimate than I might have been for one in the date range 1891-1901, since I don't have any dated F.J. Boyes portraits with negative numbers from after 1901, it at least gives us an idea of when it might have been taken. It is odd that my estimate is some seven years earlier than might be expected from Hilary's guess of a birth date for Florrie of around 1910.


Hilary also sent me this postcard portrait of a slightly older Florrie Swann with her younger brother Leslie. There is a definite likeness. Unfortunately, there is little on this portrait to provide an accurate date either, but I estimate it was taken in the early 1910s, say between 1910 and 1914.

A large group, possibly on a church outing - Frederick J. Boyes

Jane Porter recently sent me this image of a mounted print by Derbyshire photographer Frederick J. Boyes.


The photograph is 105 x 60mm with a large mount measuring 205 x 150 mm, the full extent of which is not shown in the image. Jane says, "I found this photo in an old box. My gg-grandfather Walter Baker (born 1859, Heckworthy, Devonshire & died 1950, Derby, Derbyshire) is seated in the front row, third in from the right, with his black hat on his knee." However, she knows nothing more about it.

I estimated that it was possibly taken between 1910 and 1920, and that it could have been a church outing, but I don't have any more bright ideas at the moment. If any reader thinks they can tell us more, please Email me.

P.S. Nigel Aspdin suggests that the building just visible in the background might be a "tin tabernacle."

Henry & Henrietta Payne of New Normanton, Derby

This cabinet portrait by Frederick J. Boyes of the Electric & Daylight Studio, 22 & 24 Osmaston Road, Derby is the only one known to survive of my great-great-grandparents Henry Payne (1842-1907) and his wife Henrietta Christina née Benfield (1843-1914) taken together, although there are some of them separately. I'd like to use some images of the portrait to show what can be done with some very simple digital manipulation to restore old photographs, and even enhance the originals. As I'm not in any way an expert in this matter, I don't intend it to be any sort of guide or detailed "how to," merely an illustration of the success that I've had with bringing old photos back to life. My own efforts have been achieved using Adobe Photoshop software, but I'm sure there are plenty of other options out there.


There are actually three known copies of this portrait, one in my own collection (at left), and two in that of my aunt (centre and right). The mount of my copy is rather dirtier and the photographic print itself a little more faded and spotted than the other two, but is the one that I've used for the first part of this article, as I've been able to more faithfully represent the original state on my computer screen, which is a 1024 x 768 True Color Acer TravelMate 250 notebook screen. I've also resized the scan so that it is as close as possible to the size of the original - the card mount measures 106.5 x 166.5 mm - again on my screen. I should point out that it may not appear quite the same on other screens.


Version 1 - Raw Scan
The first image (above) shows a raw scan of the photograph with no adjustment of the scanner settings. This leaves the image with a rather washed out appearance, in comparison with the original, and it is not too difficult a task to remedy this with some adjustments in Photoshop using the Levels, Curves and Color Balance tools.


Version 2 - Approximate Current State
The second image gives a relatively faithful impression of what my copy of the photograph looks like now. It will be seen that not only has the mount become rather grubby and has slightly bumped corners, while the photographic print has suffered some degradation over time in the form of spotting, but the photo also has some fingerprint marks, some dark smudges or dirt marks of unknown origin, rubbing at the edges, and numerous fine scratches on the surface.


Version 3 - Enhanced image
The third image has been slightly enhanced, and is perhaps a little closer to what it originally looked like, apart from the spotting and scratches. In spite of all these blemishes, it is still a very fine portrait, showing Henry and Henrietta dressed in their finest. Henry was by that time a builder and vaccination officer for the Borough of Derby - not bad for someone who was in the workhouse from the age of eight to fifteen. Both of my aunt's copies have the negative number 12948, which my copy lacks, and one of them has the pencilled inscription "Helen About Apr. 1898," which is probably more or less contemporary with the photograph. Helen Payne (1883-1993) was Henry and Henrietta's youngest daughter, who died unmarried, and was probably the author of the inscription.


Version 4 - Colorised image
It is also possible to digitally enhance images in a manner which simulates some of the "colouring" methods used by photographers' artists in Victorian and Edwardian photo studios. Andre Hallam has very kindly done an excellent job of colourising the photograph of Henry and Henrietta, for which I am very grateful. He has also cleaned up the image very nicely, so the scratches and spots are gone! I am very impressed with the textures of the fabrics - the colours bring them out very well indeeed. Andre tells me that he is "still learning," but might be prepared to do some of this work on contract in the near future. Please contact him directly if you are interested.

Tennyson's "Dream of Fair Women"

I purchased this postcard photo some time ago on eBay because it is from the studio of Frederick J. Boyes (of 22 & 24 Osmaston Road, Derby). However, it is also of interest for the reason that it is from a rather different genre from the usual contributions that I receive. It is a standard postcard format picture. The reverse is of a very ordinary design, with no studio name printed; as was common with Boyes' later postcard portraits, the studio name and details are blind stamped onto the lower right hand corner of the front of the card.


Tennyson's "Dream of Fair Women"
It is inscribed in pen on the reverse, "Tennyson's 'Dream of Fair Women'" - nothing else. I wasn't familiar with this poem, but the full text may be found here. It was an early poem written by Tennyson in 1833, but it was strongly criticized by reviewers, and "made little impression on the Victorian public which had lost its taste for poetry and was devoted mainly to prose fiction." [Source: Modern English Books of Power, by G.H. Fitch, 1912] Millais provided an illustration for an 1857 publication of the work:


Illustration for Tennyson's "A Dream of Fair Women", by John Everett Millais, 1857, engraved by W.J. Linton
The popularity of the work appears to have undergone something of a revival in the Edwardian era. The art noveaux period brought this work in the romantic genre by Emma Florence Harrison, probably from shortly before the Great War. A film of that name was also produced in 1920


"A Dream of Fair Women", by British artist Emma Florence Harrison
Unfortunately, the identity of the cast members of this performance of "A Dream of Fair Women" has not been preserved along with the photo. As I purchased it on eBay, the provenance is also lost. However, there must, somewhere, be records of the poem-play being performed in Derby. I presume it was in Derby, as Boyes was unlikely to have travelled very far afield. It looks as though it has been taken in a suburban garden, but there are few clues as to where. My guess is that it dates from between 1905 and 1925, but it's difficult to be more accurate than that, because the costumes are, after all, costumes.

Perhaps there is a reader out there who can offer some more insights into when and where the performance may have taken place, and who the actors were?