5.6.4 Wedding anniversaries

Silver and golden wedding anniversaries were often commemorated with a portrait. Many examples follow the pattern of the studio portraits taken for engagements and weddings, with the couple taken individually and together.

Image 67: Photographer/Painter: R.B. Gilpin, Radcliffe. Subject: Full-length seated female, 1890s.

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Photograph of a woman

Image 67: Photographer/Painter: R.B. Gilpin, Radcliffe. Subject: Full-length seated female, 1890s.

Image 68: Photographer/Painter: R.B. Gilpin, Radcliffe. Subject: Full-length seated male, 1890s.

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Photograph of a man

Image 68: Photographer/Painter: R.B. Gilpin, Radcliffe. Subject: Full-length seated male, 1890s.

These portraits would have been carefully designed to face each other in an album.

There is another common treatment where the anniversary couple was portrayed surrounded by their children. Such portraits regularly excluded sons- and daughters-in-law, as in Image 69.

Image 69 Photographer/Painter: Arthur Holborn, Bristol. Subject: Family group, 1890s.

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A family portrait

Image 69 Photographer/Painter: Arthur Holborn, Bristol. Subject: Family group, 1890s.