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Portrait of a Young Woman in Asaba

Image Portraits
Portrait of a young woman with traditional necklaces and polka-dot textile.
Portrait of a young woman. From William Henry Crosse, Crosse Collection, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge.

A photograph depicting a young woman in a bust-length portrait, captured with a direct gaze. She is adorned with light-colored, pendulous earrings and a collar-style necklace consisting of circular disc-like elements on a dark band. Her dark, textured hair is pulled back from the forehead, featuring small, light-colored, spherical ornaments near the temples and two thick braids descending toward her shoulders. A textile with a high-contrast polka-dot pattern is draped over her left shoulder, while her right shoulder is bare. The image is a monochrome lantern slide from the Crosse Collection, taken during William Henry Crosse's tenure as Principal Medical Officer for the Royal Niger Company between 1886 and 1895.

Community Notes

Onyeka Nwokike

Oct 22, 2026

While serving as the Principal Medical Officer for the Royal Niger Company, Crosse's official residence was located in Asaba, which functioned as the seat of the company's civil administration. Beyond his archival photography, Crosse authored several works on tropical medicine, such as Notes on the Malarial Fevers Met with on the River Niger, West Africa (1892), as noted in his Obituary: William Henry Crosse - JSTOR.

Onyeka Nwokike

Oct 22, 2026

The high-contrast polka-dot textile indicates the influx of European trade goods, specifically Manchester cottons, while the thick braids and small spherical ornaments at the temples are characteristic of traditional Enuani (Asaba-Onitsha) grooming styles.

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