Isabella Grace and H. B. Loch, 5 Princes Gardens

Hawarden used the balcony on the south side of her house in Princes Gardens in London as an open-air studio, floating in space. She posed her daughter Isabella Grace beside her mother’s cousin, Henry Brougham Loch. This double portrait must date from the summer of 1861, because the houses on the south side of the square are still being built. Virginia Dodier has written that Loch was a celebrity in 1861, because he ‘survived imprisonment by the Chinese during the Second Opium War’.