Photographs without all the flashiness

Seeing the National Portrait Gallery's new display of Victorian photographs is like stumbling across a mantelpiece in a grandparent's sitting room.

Deep in the Late Victorian Arts room, the row of 14 pictures is humbled by the oil paintings and stone busts of the gallery: famous subjects including prime minister William Gladstone and composer Clara Schumann take on a domestic sepia as though they're some lost uncle or great aunt.

The images are part of a collection from London studio portraiture firm Elliott & Fry, active from 1863 to 1963. Sitters could choose from a selection of 15 painted backgrounds; gentlemen cricketers the Studd brothers stand in their sporting whites against a backdrop of artificial pastoralism.

Despite being slightly lost amid the grandeur of the gallery, the setting is a reminder of a time when photography was beginning to eclipse painting as the popular form of portraiture.

It was before the slickness of the publicity machine or the snapshots of the paparazzi - and it shows. Composer Franz Liszt looks like a grumpy Santa in a three-piece, and Gladstone is photographed leaning on a tree, axe in hand - it's not quite Tony Blair holding a baby.

Until July 22, National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place WC2, daily 10am to 6pm (Thu and Fri to 9pm), free. Tel: 020 7312 2463. www.npg.org.uk Tube: Charing Cross/ Leicester Square

Elliott & Fry
National Portrait Gallery
St Martin's Place, WC2