Archduke Rainer of Austria and family

An unusually large group for a Silvy portrait, this portrait shows Archduke Rainer of Austria (1827-1913) with his wife, Archduchess Maria Carolina (1825-1915), and three other, as yet unidentified, sitters. The two unidentified men are possibly two of the Archduke’s brothers, the unidentified woman possibly the wife of one of them.

Archduke Rainer Ferdinand Maria Johann Evangelist Franz Ignaz, Prince Imperial and Archduke of Austria, Prince Royal of Hungary and Bohemia, was born in Vienna on 11 January 1827, the 4th son of Archduke Rainer of Austria (1783-1853), who was himself the 14th child of Emperor Leopold II, who was the 9th child of Empress Maria Theresa. On 21 February 1852, he married at Vienna Archduchess Maria Carolina.

Archduke Rainer died in Vienna on 27 January 1913.

Photographed by Camille Silvy on 5 August 1861.

The Victoria and Albert Museum has an uncut sheet of cartes-de-visite from this sitting. A pencilled inscription on its reverse identifies the sitters as 'Comte Schoenkirchen et famille' so presumably the Archduke and his party were travelling incognito.