Image shows Marie Kestner in front of Peñón de Ifach in Calpe, Spain, c1911
Vernon MacAndrew worked for his family's shipping firm after he left school in 1898. It shipped citrus fruit from Spain and Portugal to Britain via a fleet of 20 steamships. Some time around 1905, Vernon was made manager of the MacAndrew office in Valencia and he moved to a house in the middle of the city.
Over the next 8 years he took over 100 images of the city and surrounding countrside using the latest autochrome technique, that had been launched in 1907. It includes many landscapes featuring his family, including his fiancee and later his wife Marie Kestner, who he married in Barcelona in 1912. Many of the images are of places that are now well known for their hotels and tourism, but then they were virgin countryside and orange groves.
Autochrome images are relatively uncommon especially from before WW1, and it would be interesting to know how many colour images of these landscapes, some now disappeared are in the public domain in Spain. As war approached, Vernon and Marie (who was German) left Spain and returned to the family home in Mickelham, where, in 1915, newspapers record Vernon giving a talk on his colour images with a lantern slide presentation.
After suffering many losses to German submarines, the MacAndrew family sold their shipping business in 1917, leaving Vernon financially independent and with no further work responsibilities. In 1922 he and Marie bought a well established house in Warfleet, Dartmouth called Ravensbury, that became their family home for the next 20 years.