Florence Nightingale

This is a carte de viste of Florence Nightingale, a woman who gained national fame during the nineteenth century as a campaigner for the reform of hospital nursing and army medical facilities.

During the Crimean War (1854-1856), when she was nicknamed 'The Lady with the Lamp', Nightingale worked tirelessly to rehabilitate the sick and the wounded and to improve hospital conditions. After the war ended, Nightingale campaigned for a reformation of nursing in British hospitals and was consulted as an international authority on hospital sanitisation and administration. In 1860 she established the Nightingale Training School for Nurses at St. Thomas' Hospital, now the site of the Florence Nightingale Museum.

Nightingale often refused to sit for portraits and disliked having her photograph taken. Despite this, a number of contemporaries produced likenesses of her in a variety of media, including sculpture, oil paint, engraving and woodcut. Her portrait even appeared on British currency. This photograph is one of several of Nightingale by William Kilburn which depict Nightingale, aged 34, in the same year she embarked on her journey to Crimea.

Carte-de-vistes (small-scale photographic portraits), grew in popularity during the 1850s and were often traded between friends and family in place of 'visiting cards'.