Welsh women, c. 1880
Hudson's Series

An albumen print showing a group of Welsh women drinking tea outside a single storey building. Most of the women are wearing traditional Welsh costume, including the narrow-brimmed high-crowned Welsh hat.

The image may be understood as part of the commercial photographer’s fascination with ‘the exotic other,’ wherever it might be found. The women of the Welsh valleys and their traditional costumes were no less alien to an urban, middle-class audience than the inhabitants of the rain forests of Borneo. Ignoring the harsh realities of agricultural life, the photographer has concentrated instead on tea-drinking, a trope that occurred frequently in depictions of the region’s inhabitants, as if the Welsh somehow had an even greater proclivity for the beverage than their English neighbours.

Photographed by Hudson’s Series, identified in the print along the lower edge.

Condition: the print is in excellent condition, with very good tonal range. It is mounted on a section of cut-down album page, the reverse of which carries a view of a valley in North Wales.

Dimensions: the print measures 5.3” by 7.8” (13.3 cm by 19.7 cm); the mount measures 6.6” by 10.2” (16.9 cm by 26 cm).