The Little Woodseller
1876
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions
Image: 4 1/8 × 3 1/4 in. (10.5 × 8.3 cm)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.1087
Tags
Art Historical Context
In 1876, Scottish photographer John Thomson captured *The Little Woodseller*, poignant albumen silver print a glass negative, now housed in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Gilman Collection. Measuring just 4 1/8 × 3 1/4 inches, this intimate portrait depicts a young boy, emblematic of London's working-class street children during the Victorian era. Thomson, renowned for his pioneering documentary photography, used this small-scale format—common for affordable cartes-de-visite—to bring the realities of urban poverty into middle-class parlors. The albumen process, popular from the 1850s to 189...
About the Artist
John Thomson · 1837–1921
John Thomson (1837–1921), a pioneering Scottish photographer, was born on 14 June 1837 in Edinburgh as the eighth of nine children to William Thomson, a tobacco spinner and trader, and Isabella Newlands.) After schooling in the early 1850s, he apprenticed with a local optical and scientific instrument manufacturer, where he mastered the principles of photography, completing his training around 185...