On 29th June 1863, photographer William Downey set up his equipment in the garden of a house in the Chelsea district of London.
The house was home to the poet and illustrator Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882).
Joining him for the photoshoot were his friend and fellow Pre-Raphaelite artist William Bell Scott (1811-1890) together with the writer and critic John Ruskin (1819-1900).
Earlier in the year, Rossetti and Bell Scott had been photographed separately by William and his brother Daniel for their company, W. & D. Downey of Newcastle on Tyne.
Hence, adding Ruskin to the line-up had a commercial caché.
The resulting photographs featuring the trio were then published by Downey in a variety of formats including cabinet cards and cartes de visite.
As to how the photoshoot came about, Bell Scott may well have been pivotal.
He was a Tyneside connection of the Downey brothers from his years as head of the Government School of Design in Newcastle (1843-1864).
In later years when interviewed about his own career, William Downey (1829-1915) recalled an incident about the Bell Scott/Rossetti/Ruskin photoshoot “hitherto unpublished.”
“I was taking their portraits together, and for the purpose of grouping would have had Mr. Ruskin sit down.
“But no. His reverence for Rossetti was so great that he would not sit down in his presence, and so had to be taken standing” (from ‘The Queen’s Photographer,’ English Illustrated Magazine, March 1896).
For the collector and those with an interest in the Downey photographic dynasty, these images are high on any wish list.
But their scarcity and budgetary constraints make adding such images to the Pressphotoman collection highly unlikely.
Given this, it was a moment of high excitement this week to obtain this carte portrait of John Ruskin taken on the same occasion.
Pressphotoman 
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