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This portrait shows Wallace as a young man, aged 25. It appears to have been cut out from a larger photograph and mounted on card with a purple tint. Wallace sits in his finest clothes, wearing spectacles.
The image was used in Wallace's 1905 autobiography - My Life (volume one, facing page 264). The caption in the book says that it was from a 'daguerreotype'. This was a special kind of photography of the time, able to capture very fine detail.
In April of the year of this photograph Wallace and fellow naturalist Henry Walter Bates set off on their first collecting expedition to the Amazon region of South America.
For enquiries about the Wallace Collection please email the library
View high resolution scans and transcripts of Alfred Russel Wallace's correspondence, including all surviving letters between him and Charles Darwin.
