Nat Gould

Charles Du Val

Charles Duval was the eldest child of Charles Allen Du Val and his wife Elizabeth, baptised in Manchester Cathedral on 7 March 1836. He married Elizabeth Atkinson, the daughter of the Registrar of Carlisle. They had two children, a son Charles who was born on 7 September 1885, and a daughter Cicely who died as a young girl in about 1905.

Unlike his artist parents, Charles Duval does not seem to have been a painter. Instead he followed his father in the photographic side of the art world. When the firm of C.A. Du Val & Co was set up, the young Charles Duval managed it for his father, together with his future brother-in-law Thomas George Whaite. After his father died in 1872, and Thomas George Whaite had left for London in 1881, that firm continued trading until 1886. However in 1884 Charles Duval started trading under his own name in the photographic business from 77 Oldham Street in Manchester.

By 1886 he had branches at 243 Cheetham Hill Road and at 158 Chapel Street in Salford. These addresses were short-lived, and he later moved to 107 Oldham Street in the centre of Manchester. His studio remained there until his death in about 1892, after which the business was continued at the same address by his widow until 1912. In the 1880s and 1890s carte-de-visite and cabinet photographs were extremely popular, and Charles Duval produced vast quantities of them. They appear with various types of backs, mostly elegantly designed but sometimes in plain dark colours.

Charles Duval died in about 1892, but the business was carried on by his widow Elizabeth Duval under her late husband’s name until 1912.

Although by then in other hands, the premises at 107 Oldham Street were still a photographic business in 1992, and the old glass-house studio was still visible.