1876 Woodburytype of Lord George Hamilton Under-Secretary of State for India
London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1876. A sharp and clear oval Woodburytype portrait of Lord George Hamilton; approx. 3 1/2" x 4 1/2" size, on the original heavy paper 8 1/2" x 10 1/2" sheet; Lord George Francis Hamilton (1845-1927) British politician, "...Disraeli made him under-secretary for India...(and) From 1895 Hamilton was secretary of state for India, a post he held for a record eight years...The Times obituarist (23 Sept 1927) highlighted the ‘great work he did at the Admiralty’ and his ‘long and able tenure of the Indian Office’, but felt that ‘he held fast to a tradition too austere to be popular; his own political imagination was not inflamed, and he had neither the will nor the power to inflame the imagination of others’. John Morley had found that at the India Office he was remembered as an outstanding minister. These are among many indications that he was a gifted administrator with a strong sense of duty and of loyalty to party, but limited political gifts. Hamilton was always good company, if no great orator-a man unexpectedly and misleadingly catapulted into popular electoral politics." He was a diligent defender of the independence of Indian government, even against the cabinet (John Ramsden in the DNB; photograph by Thompson Cooper, Lock & Whitfield photographers; oval Woodburytype, (photoglyptie) patented in 1864 by Walter Bentley Woodbury (1834-1885) an early form of photomechanical print, made by embossing a photographic image on paper with a metal mold containing the gelatin relief of a photographic negative: "...the tonal scale of the resultant image was highly luminous...has a continuous tone, showing neither a screen nor a grain pattern..." (Baldwin, 1991); a striking portrait of this noted British politician; in very good condition. Item #20040
Price: $20.00