1862.b.20

Description

Scope and content : Photograph album bound in maroon half leather and brown buckram, measuring 317 x 455 mm, with leather title panel pasted down on front board, with brass clasp, edges gilt; inscribed 'Ex Libris Alfred Jones [?]Batte' on front free endpaper. The album is bound and compiled in the standard style of the Burke studio (compare duplicate copy at Photo 487), and contains 100 albumen prints mounted one to a page (recto and verso) on stiff card leaves, with captions written in ink in a neat hand beneath each image, together with photographer's reference number.The album provides a broadly chronological record of the first stages of the Second Anglo-Afghan War, including the British advance into Afghanistan, from Attock in the Punjab and across the Khyber Pass to Jalalabad, ending with a series of group portraits associated with the signing of the Treaty of Gandamak between Amir Yakub Khan and the British in May 1879.Severeal of the views and portraits at the start of the album predate these events by more than a decade: the views at Peshawar for example (prints 6-7), were taken between 1860 and 1864, while the portraits of Amir Sher Ali Khan (prints 1-2), were taken at Jamrud on his return from the Ambala Durbar with the Viceroy Lord Mayo in March 1869.