Illustrated colourful designs on paper — Mary Watts, *Illustrated Photograph Album*, c.1865-67, photographs with additions in pen, ink and watercolour
Watts Gallery Trust

This photograph album is thought to be Mary’s earliest-surviving creative work.

Family photographs are pasted alongside cartes-de-visites (small photographic portraits) of famous figures, including Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Queen Victoria and Prince Alamayou of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia).

The album is decorated throughout with Mary’s detailed watercolour illustrations.

After cartes-de-visites were introduced to Britain in 1857, the creation of photograph albums became a popular pastime. This album provides a visual record of Mary’s early years and her family. This interest in documenting her life and those close to her, would evolve in later years through her diary writing, her biography and the cataloguing of her husband Geoge Frederic Watts’s life and work.