A Portrait

Beards, Old Age: Men, Portrait: Men

Dimensions

Image Dimensions: 15.3 x 12.0 cm
Support Dimensions: 38.6 x 27.9 cm

Commenting in the accompanying catalogue letterpress, Alfred Horsley Hinton writes of Müller’s work and this plate:

Mr. F Müller, of Munich, is splendidly successful in his treatment of large heads, and furnishes the Exhibition with several very notable examples of how the photographic portrait may go further in satisfying the higher demands of art than some of the most elaborate compositions. This is realised to no small degree in studying the picture of an old man’s head, which Mr. Müller unaffectedly entitles A Portrait. It is just this sort of work which is quite independent of any interest borrowed from its title; the aesthetic pleasure which it creates is complete, and rises superior to matters of circumstance and fact. How this end is obtained may not be easy to define. Mr. Müller employs a rough-surfaced paper, but it is in the effective arrangement of the light and intelligent suppression of too much detail that Mr. Müller’s artistic sense reveals itself. This artist has several other similar works in the room, all Portraits, but the above-named(No. 146) is the best, and has received a medal.

Friedrich Müller, of Munich, was the Photographer to the Court of Bavaria.