Commenting in the accompanying catalogue letterpress, Henry Peach Robinson writes of Henry Steven’s work and this plate:

Mr. Henry Stevens is the prince of flower photographers, and he never did better work than Flower Study (291); but this year it is his winter scenes that attract universal attention. There are several of them in the room (271 to 273), but the best is on the screen, An Old-fashioned Winter, 1890 (566). This delightful sleighing picture is good enough to make the success of the Christmas number of any illustrated paper, and we are pleased to give a reproduction of it. There is life and motion; the sleigh flies over the snow; the young lady behind, on skates, moves; and the dog in front thinks it is all done for his enjoyment. We may perhaps venture to congratulate the artist on having such charming models in his daughters. Mr. Stevens has another photograph, most interesting to the lover of Nature if it could be seen; but it is unmercifully skied-a Collection of Rare and Curious Eggs (514), including that of the extinct Epyornis Maximus, from Madagascar, which so much exceeds in size that of the ostrich that if the bird was in the same proportion it must have been thirty-five feet high. It is all a matter of date that we did not live with this kind of poultry; we might have been born pre-historic men!

Henry Stevens: 1843-1925