Collect24The Global Art Registry
Unknown, Mixed Pickles
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles · Digital image courtesy of Getty's Open Content ProgramView original →
Unknown

Mixed Pickles

about 1864

Current Collection

J. Paul Getty Museum

Los Angeles, United States

Medium
Albumen silver print
Dimensions
28.2 × 22.7 cm
Status
In Museum Collection
Collect24 Art ID
C24-386611

This fantastical collage is part of _The Westmorland Album_, an album probably compiled by Victoria Alexandrina Hare, Countess of Yarborough (also known as Lady Yarborough, 1840-1927), who was the goddaughter and namesake of Queen Victoria. Lady Yarborough may have created this photocollage, however we are not certain. The image is a play on the parlor game Mixed Pickles, a social activity that foreshadows the Surrealist drawing game of chance Exquisite Corpse. In Mixed Pickles, words are written on bits of paper and tossed in a jar. They are randomly pulled out and players are challenged to make amusing sentences out of them. For this collage, the artist replaced the slivers of paper with colorful figures with montaged photographic heads. Lord Yarborough (1835-1875), the countess’s husband, plunges a pickle fork into the bottle to retrieve some familiar characters—Lady Yarborough, her brother-in-law Cuthbert Larking (1842-1910), and the popular socialite Lady Filmer (1838-1903). One of Lady Filmer’s own albums is now in [Harvard University’s Art Museum collection](https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/317490). Through her reinterpretation of conventional photogra…

Provenance

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Registry history

  • about 1864 — Recorded in the collection of J. Paul Getty Museum — photographs

Registered on Collect24

The identity of the collector is never published. Purchase information, documents and the exact location of the artwork remain private.

Ownership not yet verified on Collect24

This artwork is documented in the Global Art Registry, but no Collect24 account is linked to it as the owner. Claiming keeps this record and its Collect24 Art ID — nothing is created a second time.

Do you own or represent this artwork? Claim this artwork →

Auction history

Public sale records matched to this work. Ownership is never disclosed.

Loading sale records…