Samuel Scudder and Winthrop Gilman

A small albumen print portrait of two men dressed as miners. An inked inscription on the album page identifies them as 'Samuel Scudder / Winthrop Gilman'.

Samuel Hubbard Scudder (1837-1911), seen here on the left, was an American entomologist and palaeontologist who also undertook systematic work with Lepidoptera (almost exclusively butterflies). Born in Boston, he graduated at Williams College in 1857 and at Harvard in 1862, by when he was already a leading figure in American entomology. A prolific writer, he published 791 papers between 1858 and 1902, on insect biogeography and paleobiogeography, insect behaviour, ontogeny and phylogeny, insect songs, trace fossils, evolution, insect biology and economic entomology. He also wrote on ethnology, general geology, and geography.

Winthrop Sargent Gilman Jr. (1839-1923) was the eldest son of the New York banker Winthrop Sargent Gilman (1808–1884). He built Neiderhurst, a historic estate located at Palisades in Rockland County, New York. He is buried in the Palisades Cemetery.

Other photographs on the same album page suggest that this portrait was taken in Freiburg, which is a centre of the mining industry in the Ore mountains. This goes some way to explaining the men's costumes, the studio backdrop and the props.

Photographer unidentified.