English: Leandro Preziosi, Portrait photo of Blanche and Clementina Le Marchant, daughters of Malta Governor Sir John Gaspard Le Marchant, 1864 "In 1864 Leandro Preziosi took photos of two of the Governor’s daughters, Blanche Maude Margaret and Clementina Mary Meysey (Tiny). These show them in costume, possibly the Carnival costumes they wore that year. Both are seated on a balus­trade (the same one used in the Sciortino photograph); the older Blanche with her feet resting on a chair, the younger Clementina (of shorter stature – about 12 years old in this photograph), with her legs dangling but crossed elegantly. Each hold posies of flowers, with Clementina wearing a small bouquet pinned on her breast. While Blanche adopts a relaxed attitude and gazes to the side, Clementina strikes a more self-conscious pose and seems to prepare herself for a much larger audience. These two photos of the Le Mar­chant sisters bear no signs of Pre­ziosi’s authorship; the photographic paper they are printed on is adhered directly onto the album page. However, this page is of vital importance because it includes the names of the sitters and the year in which the photographs were taken: 1864. The serendipitous purchase of two similar photographs of the Le Marchant sisters, only a few weeks after the former were acquired, added a novel facet to the story of photography in Malta. These two photographs are mounted as cartes-de-visite confirming the work of Preziosi; that of Blanche being printed with the photographer’s address: 19, Piazza Bretanica, Floriana, Malta. Moreover both photographs are hand-coloured. The photograph of Clementina having a handwritten note that it was “Painted by E. Bond, 13, Castle Terrace, Southsea”. To date, no details of this artist have emerged."