Who Were They?

This is another wonderful image from the San Diego photo buying extravaganza a few months back, and I’m sure you can guess why I picked it up. It’s funny, we were in a warehouse sized antique mall, stalls all over the place, but the photographs were the most busy section. I got there first and monopolized the CDVs as I made my first choices. The cuts were hard because there were so many good images, but in the end, I narrowed it down to 14 and kept it under my budget of $way to many dollars.

The photo could be a photo of a painting because it doesn’t have a true lifelike characteristic to it. The people are too perfect, the shading too soft in places, and there is no true depth behind them.

The photographer was Carl Phillipp Wollrabe of The Hague, Netherlands. I know nothing about am not up on my Dutch but I believe the backmark indicates that Wollrabe photographed Prince Frederick of the Netherlands, and “the late king and queen of Sweden and Norway.” Here’s the text. If you read Dutch and google has got this wrong please let me know.

Z. K. H. Prins Frederik der Nederlanden

En wijlen z. m. den koning en koningin

van Zweden en Noorwegen

Wollrabe was in business from 1859 to 1887. His principle location was at Boekhorststraat 91 until 1887. His widow attempted to keep the business going in 1888, but I didn’t find reference to anything after this time. He primarily shot ambrotypes in the CDV format.