Blank greetings card with envelope featuring:

Unknown man, formerly known as Sir John Fowler, 1st Bt NPG P326

© National Portrait Gallery, London

by John Jabez Edwin Mayall

For this large photograph, which was probably taken after the opening of the Metropolitan Railway in January 1863, Fowler sat to Mayall, the leading London portrait photographer. The portrait combines a somewhat incongruous studio backdrop of a village scene with the parapet of a bridge and a length of railway track. The portrait is hand-coloured, an 'extra' offered by many of the commercial firms, and housed in an elaborate gilt frame in emulation of the large-format miniature paintings favoured by the Victorians.

Card size: 125mm x 175mm

Images are printed in their original proportions, within a white border.