872
carte de visite market. Originally introduced as a novel
and inexpensive idea for personalising visiting cards,
Disdéri’s method of taking multiple images on a single
plate was the perfect medium for mass producing im-
ages of the rich and famous. The Victorians wild thirst
for collecting, building up albums of politicians, clerics,
actresses, and sporting heroes, was termed “cartomania”
and sparked an unquenchable fascination with celebrity
images that persists today. In 1861 and 1864 London
Stereoscopic opened portrait studios at 110 and 108
Regent Street respectively (106 was added in 1875
while 110 closed in 1888.) They were amongst the
most fashionable and chic in Europe and their catalogue
of clients reads as a Who’s Who of the Victorian age.
Names such as Charles Dickens (including a rare por-
trait without beard), Sarah Bernhardt, William Booth,
John Everett Millais, and William Gladstone fi lled the
catalogues. Lord Palmerston sat for four dozen portraits
in one sitting alone. They also published the famous
image of the Leviathan engineer Isambard Kingdom
Brunel by Robert Howlett in various formats and be-
came Photographers to Her Majesty after obtaining the
Royal Warrant in 1895. In addition to their brisk trade
for the private carte-de-visite collector the London Ste-
reoscopic commercially licensed their photographs and
celebrity images for use in the press and periodicals of
the day such as The London Illustrated News and The
Graphic, and in theatre programs and music sheets.
Their photographers covered newsworthy events such
as the re-opening of Crystal Palace by Queen Victoria in
- In 1871, during the Franco-Prussian War London
Stereoscopic Company produced micro-photographic
prints, each barely larger than a postage stamp, of special
pages of The Times devoted to messages to the inhab-
itants of Paris, which arrived in the besieged French
capital by pigeon post.
A great deal of London Stereoscopic’s success can
be attributed to their versatility, keeping pace with
new trends and innovations in photography. Their
interests were incredibly diverse and forward-looking.
The company held the patent for and manufactured a
popular model of the zoetrope, having earlier revived
interest in persistence of vision by demonstrating the
illusion of a vase by rotating a bent piece of wire and,
for a time, was the sole licensee of the phonograph.
Their Regent Street offi ces fi nally closed in 1922 but
they should be remembered as one of the world’s fi rst
and largest producers of licensed imagery on a global
basis. Their catalogue is a lasting record of and tribute
to the Victorian era, documenting new worlds and great
engineering projects alongside the growing obsession
with celebrity and home entertainment.
Sarah McDonald
See also: Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry
of All Nations, Crystal Palace, Hyde Park (1851);
Brewster, Sir David; Wheatstone, Charles; England,
William; Braun, Adolphe; War Photography;
Woodburytype, Woodburygravure; Collotype; Cartes-
de-Visite; and Victoria, Queen and Albert, Prince
Consort.Further Reading
Darrah, W.C., The World of Stereographs, USA, 1977.
Gernsheim, Helmut, The Rise of Photography, 1850–1880, Great
Britain, 1988.
Gernsheim, Helmut, Masterpieces of Victorian Photography,
Great Britain, 1951.
Jeffrey, Ian, An American Journey: The Photography of William
England, Munich: Prestel, 1999.
Malcolm, John, Thesis on Woodburytype Process, Manchester
Polytechnic, 1979.
Mathews, Oliver, The Album of Carte-de-Visite and Cabinet
Portrait Photographs 1854–1914, London, 1974.LOPPÉ, GABRIEL (1825–1913)
French photorapher
Born in 1825, in Montpellier, South of France, Gabriel
Loppé studied in Paris and learned painting from Fran-
çois Diday (1820–1877), a landscape artist located in
Geneva, Switzerland. A few years later, in 1848, he
realized his fi rst landscape paintings, in huge formats
and panoramas appreciated by English gentlemen. Most
of these patrons were members of the Alpine Club of
London, as Loppé had been since 1864 who was also
fascinated by exploration hikes and mountains.
Loppé’s interests in photography was likely inspired
by the Bisson brothers during their trip to Mont Blanc,
on which he accompanied them in 1861. He never prac-
ticed as a professional photographer, and remained an
amateur. As a matter of fact, he showed little interest in
technique or composition, and used photography simply
to create visual mementos.
Settled his studio in Geneva in 1862, Loppé opened
an exhibition gallery in Chamonix in 1870. After the
death of his fi rst wife in 1874, he married Elizabeth
Eccles in 1879, in London and moved to Paris in 1880,
where he photographied his every day life, and of his
family near the site of the Eiffel tower. Towards the end
of the ninteenth century, Loppé developped a pictorial-
ist aesthetic, particularly backlighting and smog effects
under the electric light during the night.
He died in Paris in 1913.
Marion PercevalLORENT, JAKOB AUGUST (1813–1884)
Scientist and inventor
Jakob August Lorent was born on December 12, 1813,
in Charleston, South Carolina. After his father died and