Albumen print carte de visite on card mount with double-rule border, inscribed in period pencil in the lower border margin: "Sir Robert Bruce". Verso features the elaborate circular belt-and-buckle backmark of "D. GINTER, / Successor to / H. H. HARRIS, / Conneautville, / PA." with negative number "10" in period pencil. Ca. 1860s -1870s. Mount measures approx. 2 1/2 x 4 in.

A witty and finely staged example of Victorian comedic photography satirizing Scottish national lore. The subject, a white hound identified in the margin as "Sir Robert Bruce," sits upright on a cane-bottom studio chair in a clever send-up of medieval Scottish monarch Robert the Bruce. Outfitted as a weary Highland commuter, the dog wears a knitted Scottish bonnet or tam-o'-shanter with a contrasting brim, clenches a tobacco pipe in his jaws, and carries a carpet bag slung around his neck like an oversized traveler's sporran. A tightly furled umbrella and luggage case rest on the side table beside him. Staged at the height of 19th-century American fascination with Sir Walter Scott and Scottish romanticism, the portrait transforms Scotland's fiercest warrior-king into an upright bourgeois pet.

[Carte de Visite, CDV, Dog Photograph, Anthropomorphic Dog, Sir Robert Bruce, D. Ginter, Conneautville Pennsylvania, Canine Photography, Smoking Pipe, Carpet Bag, Umbrella, Victorian Humor, Pet Portrait, 19th Century Photography]

Very good condition. The print displays even sepia tones and impressive detail. The mount is clean and unclipped, with light age toning noted.