[The Harvey Album]

According to the elaborately painted title page, Emily Clare Harvey gave this album to her sister-in-law Madge—Margaret Augusta Shaw—in remembrance of her marriage to Spencer Philip Harvey on February 19, 1868, and it is filled with pictures of Shaw and Harvey relatives. What is unclear is whether the album was meant, like so many wedding albums today, as a joyous expression of the union of the two families, or whether it was made with memorial overtones after Spencer’s death at age twenty-eight less than a year later.

Although not photocollages per se, the pages of this standard manufactured album were personalized with drawn and watercolor decoration surrounding each portrait. Madge’s older brother John Monson Shaw is surrounded by motifs of hunting and fishing—characteristically masculine pursuits—while Emma Jane Mansel is surrounded by a more typically feminine spray of morning glories, daisies, and cornflowers, symbolic of affection, innocence, and delicacy.