William J. Stillman's Album 8: An Artifact of Victorian Pre-Raphaelite Encounters

Among the photographic albums of the William James Stillman Collection at Union College is Album 8,a small cloth bound album with a leather cover. An alumnus of 1848, Stillman is known for his international career as a journalist, photographer, and diplomat. From traveling from New York to London to Greece and to a variety of other corners of the globe, Stillman came to influence the political, social, and cultural scenes of the nineteenth century. Union College holds more than four-hundred prints of Stillman's work as well as a collection of letters detailing correspondence between archaeologists, political figures, and family members, donated primarily in the 1950s and 70s by Stillman's family. Album 8 is unique in this collection because the subject isStillman's second wife and Pre-Raphaelite painter, Marie Spartali.