LOVELACE (ADA) The only known photographs of Ada Lovelace (3)

LOVELACE (ADA) The only known photographs of Ada Lovelace, comprising: CLAUDET (ANTOINE) 2 portraits, eighth-plate daguerreotypes, under oval gold-coloured mounts, original velvet-lined maroon morocco cases with gilt lettered credit of Claudet ('Adelaide Gallery, Strand') on upper cover, overall each 90 x 70mm., [c.1842-3]; PHILLIPS (HENRY WYNDHAM, after) Anonymous photograph of Phillips' painting of Ada Lovelace in the last year of her life, ninth-plate daguerreotype, under arch-topped gold-coloured mount, associated maroon morocco case, lower portion only, overall 72 x 60mm., [1852] (3) Footnotes: THE ONLY KNOWN PHOTOGRAPHS OF ADA LOVELACE (1815-1852), mathematician and computing pioneer. These daguerreotypes by Claudet were taken around the critical year 1843 when Lovelace published her celebrated paper on Babbage's Analytical Engine. In it she described in table form the use of punched cards to calculate Bernoulli numbers - often dubbed 'the first computer programme'. In addition, 'her comment 'The Analytical Engine has no pretension whatever to originate anything' evokes and anticipates the heated debate between proponents of artificial intelligence and those who believe the human mind cannot be reduced to a machine' (ODNB). The photographer Antoine Claudet (1797-1867) learned photography from Louis Daguerre in the late 1830s, before establishing his first daguerreotype studio in London in 1841 behind St Martin-in the-Fields church. Subsequent studios were at Regent's Park and finally Regent Street. Claudet photographed several other scientists including Babbage, Faraday, and Sir Charles Wheatstone, and it is likely that one of them recommended him to their friend Lovelace. Claudet records her in two different attires, seated in front of the same elaborate painted backdrop of foliage. In one image, she wears floral ornaments in her hair, and a lace collar with her neck bare; in the second she wears a bonnet apparently covered by a black veil, and with a tightly-knotted scarf. The third daguerreotype is by an unknown photographer and reproduces a painting by Henry Wyndham Phillips (1820-1868). His father Thomas produced the iconic portrait of Lovelace's father Byron in Albanian dress. Lovelace sat for Henry Phillips in August 1852, and in the intervening decade since the Claudet photographs, her already fragile health had worsened. She was suffering horrifically from the uterine cancer that would end her life that November. Seated at a piano, she is gaunt and in a laudanum-induced daze - her husband William remarking in his diary that 'the suffering was so great that she could scarce avoid crying out', yet 'she sat at the piano some little time so that the artist could portray her hands'. A handful of other likenesses of Lovelace exist. As a figure in the public eye, not least as the only legitimate child of Lord Byron, Lovelace had been painted in 1836 aged around twenty by Margaret Sarah Carpenter (NPG L274). In 1839, a portrait of Lovelace by Alfred Châlon was published as a popular engraving. Lovelace was particularly intrigued by photography, however, and wrote presciently in an unpublished piece that 'it is as yet quite unsuspected how important a part photography is to play in the advancement of human knowledge.' Provenance: By descent within Lovelace family (although see below regarding the Phillips image); Lady Wentworth, presumably Judith (1873-1957), the granddaughter of Ada Lovelace; Doris Langley Moore (1903-1989); Sotheby's, 19-20 July 1993, lot 246 (included in a larger group lot from the collection of Moore, the daguerreotypes within this group originally 'from the collection of Lady Wentworth'); Marlborough Rare Books, from whom acquired on 9 September 1993 by the present owner, Geoffrey Bond. The Bodleian archives contain a note written in Lovelace's last days, in which she leaves 'to my Mother's oldest Friend, Mary Millicent Montgomery... a Daguerreotype from Philips's [sic] Picture of me' (Bodleian Dep. Lovelace Byron 175, fol. 137r; referenced in https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/adalovelace/2015/10/14/only-known-photographs-of-ada-lovelace-in-bodleian-display/). It is possible that this was another daguerreotype copy of the Phillips portrait and not the present example: Hollings, Martin and Rice posit that 'this daguerreotype copy was made at her request, to give to friends after her death', suggesting there were multiple daguerreotype copies. However, since Mary Montgomery died childless in 1868, it seems more likely that her copy is the present example, which then reverted to the Lovelace family and descended to Judith, Lady Wentworth (d.1957). Exhibited: Bodleian Library, Oxford, 'Ada Lovelace', 15 October to 20 December 2015 (the two by Claudet and the image after Phillips). Bodleian Library, Oxford, 'A New Power: Photography in Britain 1800-1850', 1 February to 7 May 2023 (the image after Phillips, item 40). National Portrait Gallery, London, 'Making Photographs: a Revolution in Portraiture', 22 June 2023 to 2 September 2024 (the Claudet, with flowers in her hair). Illustrated: Doris Langley Moore, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, 1977, facing p.279 (Ada with flowers in her hair, 'the last known photograph'). Dorothy Stein, Ada: a Life and a Legacy, 1985 (after Phillips). Betty Alexandra Toole, Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers, 1992, p.417 (after Phillips). Susan Normington, Byron and his Children, 1995, fig.59 (with flowers in her hair, 'taken in 1850, the year of her visit to Newstead Abbey') and fig.66 (after Phillips). Christopher Hollings, Ursula Martin and Adrian Rice, Ada Lovelace: the Making of a Computer Scientist, 2018, fig.34 (with flowers in her hair), and fig.58 repeated on rear panel of dust-jacket (after Phillips, 'this daguerreotype copy was made at her request, to give to friends after her death'). For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing