Last week’s post about the violin prodigy Marie Hall (1884-1956) was the latest resulting from a research dive into the numerous photographic postcards of her.

It was a real pleasure to identify one such postcard, sent to her younger sister Eveline, as Marie’s career was becoming a whirl of international engagements.

This latest post looks at the months immediately following her London concert debut in February 1903, aged 18, and how her public image was shaped by photography.

A number of portrait studios moved swiftly to produce images of the British teenager whose performance had caused such a sensation.

At this point, photographs were a newly attractive medium, both to illustrated papers and to postcard producers with an instinct for what the public wanted to buy.

In Marie Hall, they had a hot property.

Among the first to photograph the new star was the illustrious studio of Bassano.

Based at 25 Old Bond Street in London’s West End, it had been operating since the 1870s.

Their portrait presents the young woman in a typical violinist’s pose, playing alongside what appears to be an elaborately carved music stand.

This image was published as a postcard in various sizes by the Rotary Photographic Company Ltd of West Drayton, Middlesex.

Also quick off the mark was the Newcastle on Tyne photographer Mrs. Henrietta Theonie Burrell (1860-1934), who initially triggered my interest in Marie Hall postcards.

Mrs. Burrell

A few weeks after the violinist’s London debut, Mrs. Burrell took advantage of a rapturously-received concert appearance in Marie’s native Tyneside.

By early April, the photographer had registered copyright forms for three different portraits of the wunderkind.

In due course, it was again the Rotary Photographic Company, who published them as a series of ‘real photo’ postcards.

The portraits are less formal and capture a different sense of the young woman’s style, even though she is wearing the same concert dress as in the Bassano portrait.

However, the photographer with whom Marie Hall seems to have established a lasting  rapport was waiting patiently in the wings.

Later in April 1903, copyright forms for a total of seven portraits featuring Marie Hall were registered at Stationers’ Hall in London.

They were the work of Lena Connell (1875-1949), who learned her craft in the photography business run by her father.

Unusually for the time, her own studio employed female staff and photographed both male and female clients.

Today Lena Connell is best-known for her wonderful portraits of suffragettes involved with the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) of which she was a member.

Speaking to The Vote newspaper in 1910, she recalled how “Miss Marie Hall was at the beginning of her career and the photo I did of her then is still her favourite.”

In the words of the writer: “Miss Connell showed me a photo of Miss Hall … her eyes with that curious half-frightened, half-determined look in them, looming out of the picture.”

This series of portraits was also published as postcards by another of London’s leading firms, J. Beagles & Co. Ltd.

Lena’s images of the violinist also proved popular with the illustrated press, who used them in conjunction with news stories and concert reviews.

But, as in this example, Lena was not always credited for her work as was the experience of many portrait photographers, both male and female.

Whether the photographer took it upon herself to fight for due recognition, the recently-launched tabloid Daily Mirror didn’t make the same error.

It correctly credited ‘Lena Connell’ when a re-sized halftone version of the same portrait appeared to mark Marie’s 21st birthday in April 1905.

This reflected a new trend whereby such photographic portraits entered the libraries of newspapers and magazines and appeared alongside subsequent stories as stock shots.

Lena’s working relationship with Marie Hall continued and this fine credited portrait alongside her younger sister Eveline was published by the popular weekly Black & White magazine in 1906.

Do you know of other Marie Hall portraits by Lena Connell?

A selection of Lena Connell’s photographs feature in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

For further reading, her career is the subject of Colleen Denney’s 2021 book The Suffrage Photography of Lena Connell: Creating a Cult of Great Women Leaders in Britain, 1908-1914 (McFarland Press: Jefferson, North Carolina).

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