Photographers Andrew Taylor and George Taylor opened their first studio in Cannon Street in east London in 1866. By the early 1880s, the business had expanded to include further premises in London as well as branches in numerous regional cities. Eventually, the business had some 30 outlets in districts including Birmingham, Cardiff, Swansea, Liverpool, Nottingham, Edinburgh, Derby, Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds and Bristol, as well as a number of branches in the USA. Specialists in cabinet cards and cartes de visite, the firm was granted a Royal Warrant in 1886, thereafter advertising themselves as ‘Photographers to the Queen’. The National Portrait Gallery, London, holds a number of examples of the studio’s work, including a photograph of Queen Victoria with her grandson, Alexander Mountbatten, 1888, and a carte de visite of Prime Minister, William Gladstone, 1869.
