Photograph (Albumen Print, Carte de Visite) of John Ruskin, by C. L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), Printed and Published by Henry Peach Robinson, Tunbridge Wells, December 1878

Carte de visite (albumen print mounted on card) of John Ruskin, seated half length, facing right but looking front, leaning back in a leather chair in an unusual pose. The card has a full advertising back recording 41 medals won at photographic exhibitions between 1860 and 1878. The publisher or distributor is Henry Peach Robinson (1830-1901), famous for his artistic photographs, which were influenced by Pre-Raphaelite and Ruskinian pictorial ideals. His basic livelihood was his studio at Tunbridge Wells from 1868, building a new one in 1878 and leaving his son to run it from the 1880s. Although there is no indication of it in the captions, Robinson was not the photographer in this instance, but printed and distributed it on behalf of the original photographer, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll), who took the photograph in Oxford in 1875. Contemporaries regarded it as one of the best photographs of Ruskin.