The London Portrait Company

[jbml]

This is a long shot, I know. But here goes.

My great aunt has a photograph of her grandfather (my great x2 grandfather) which was taken by the London Portrait Company of 68 Cheapside.

It has a negative number on the back (52971).

Does anybody know whether the London Portrait Company still exists somewhere; or if not, what became of its negatives and whether they are still held in some photographic archive somewhere?

(I suspect that the answer is that the negatives, if they survived that long, were probably destroyed in the Blitz ... but this is not inevitably so by any means!)

[KGarrad]

The company appears to be in business between 1864 and 1880?

http://www.photohistory-sussex.co.uk/Newcombe_LPG_Gallery.htm
After Frederick Thomas Newcombe parted company with the studio, it was taken over by Francis Gilling until 1875, then moved to The Strand until 1880.

Some more info here:
http://www.photohistory-sussex.co.uk/Hastings_Newcombe.htm
and
http://www.photolondon.org.uk/pages/details.asp?pid=4837

[jbml]

Thanks K.

My great x2 grandfather was born in 1853, and the portrait appears to be of a young man in his 20s.

Given the dates you quote, this must have been taken at the very end of the studio's working life; and I'm guessing that it may have been a coming-of-age portrait (he was a vellum binder, the son of a detective sergeant in the City of London police; so reasonably comfortably off but not well-to-do by any means).