Is this the only photo of the three Bronte sisters? Collector who bought picture for $25 on eBay believes it shows sibling novelists

  • Seamus Molloy bought the image thinking it looked like the Bronte sisters 
  • He believes it is a copy of picture taken in the early days of photography   
  • Sceptical Bronte academics say it is unlikely to be the famous authoresses 

By David Wilkes for Daily Mail

Published: 16:02 EST, 17 July 2015 | Updated: 19:31 EST, 17 July 2015

It is clearly a photo with a story to tell – and collector Seamus Molloy hopes it will earn a place in the history of literature.

For he believes the subjects in the grainy antique picture, which cost him only £15 on eBay, are Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte.

If so, it would be the only known photo of the sisters. Mr Molloy, 47, bought the 4½in by 3¼in image because he thought its subjects resembled the Brontes in the only known surviving portrait of them, painted by their brother Branwell.

Claim: Collector Seamus Molloy, from West Yorkshire, believes this antique picture he bought for £15 on eBay is the only photograph of all Bronte sisters - Charlotte, Anne and Emily - in the entire world

The image, on glass, was sold as a portrait of three women from around 1900. Mr Molloy believes it is a copy of a photo taken in the early days of commercial photography.

The original would have to date from the 1840s – Emily, who wrote Wuthering Heights, died in 1848 aged 30; Anne, who wrote Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, died in 1849 aged 29; Charlotte, best known for Jane Eyre, died in 1855 aged 38.

Mr Molloy, from Halifax, West Yorkshire, claims that by using photo enhancing software he has identified the word ‘Bells’ on the reverse. The sisters used the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.

Yesterday Catherine Rayner, of the Bronte Society, said: ‘It would be wonderful if it is. It is worth investigating. 

'We have discussed it and there is a possibility it might go forward for some sort of forensic examination. 

'Most of me is saying I don’t think it can be them. But we are not dismissing it.’

Portrait: A painting of Anne, Emily and Charlotte Bronte by their brother Patrick Branwell Bronte
Emily Bronte, the author of Wuthering Heights, posted for a painting in the days before commerical photography

Portrait: A painting of Anne, Emily and Charlotte Bronte by their brother Patrick Branwell Bronte, while Emily Bronte, the author of Wuthering Heights, posted for a painting in the days before commercial photography

Ann Dinsdale, of the Bronte Museum in Haworth, West Yorkshire, said: ‘It seems unlikely that the Brontes would have been photographed. 

'Photography was in its infancy. The family was quite reclusive and Emily and Anne were unknown at that time. 

'Naturally there is a huge interest in what they looked like. However, provenance of images is hard to establish and sadly we may never really know.’

‘The Brontë sisters are admired and respected the world over and naturally there is a huge interest in what they looked like. However, provenance of images is hard to establish and sadly we may never really know.’

Mr Molloy has also contacted the National Portrait Gallery, where photographs cataloguer Constantia Nicolaides said there were ‘notable differences’ in the brow lines and lip shape of the subjects in the photograph from those of the sisters as painted by Branwell.

Two historical costume experts, contacted by the Mail without being told it was believed to be a photograph of the Brontes, dated the clothing worn by the women to around 1850 - tantalisingly close to the latest date it could have been taken, 1848 when Emily died.

The National Media Museum in Bradford told Mr Molloy the image is a ‘collodian positive’, a process that was commercially available after 1852, and doubted a photographer would have used that to copy an even earlier form of photograph as it would have been ‘practically difficult’.