Arthur Walker
- Artist: Camille Silvy
- Date: 1860
- Medium: albumen print
- Dimensions: Purchased, 1904
- Museum: The National Portrait Gallery
- Collection record: The National Portrait Gallery website
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About this artwork
This portrait of Arthur Walker was captured by photographer Camille Silvy on 24 September 1860. You can see him standing upright, his head turned slightly to the left, wearing a dark frock coat and a brimmed hat. The image is an albumen print – a popular early photographic process that used egg‑white paper coated with silver salts; it gives the portrait its fine detail and soft tonal range. Silvy was a prolific French photographer who worked in London and produced over 14 000 prints during his career. The photograph sits in our Photographs Collection, catalogued as NPG Ax50737, offering a glimpse of mid‑nineteenth‑century portraiture when photographers used long exposures and posed subjects for precise lighting.
See it in person
Arthur Walker is in the collection of The National Portrait Gallery at St Martin's Place, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
