In 1875, Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh traveled along the Volga with his wife Maria Alexandrovna (daughter of Emperor Alexander II) and visited the Nizhny Novgorod fair. The Duke was an amateur in photography and was distrustful of the stories about the craftsmanship and inventions of the Nizhny Novgorod celebrity Andrew Karelin. He deliberately sat down, crossing his legs, so that when shooting with any camera, his figure would be out of proportion. In the late 1870s photographers could not make such portraits without distorting the proportions - knees would become huge since they were in the foreground, hands in the background would be much larger than the face on the third plane. Still, the photograph completely satisfied the Duke and was recognized by him as a highly artistic work.