Mlle Urbain

A pencilled inscription verso in period hand identifies the sitter.

Photographed by the United Association of Photography Limited, 'Patentees and Sole Proprietors of Wothlytype.'

According to the website of New York's Metropolitan Museum: 'In 1864, the German studio photographer Jacob Wothly patented his invention of the Wothlytype, a process of using uranium salts in addition to silver for photographic prints. The technique was intended to overcome the problem of fading common to albumen prints; however, the results suffered from the same problem and the Wothlytype was never widely adopted.'