Victorian Photography

from the Collection of the Clark Art Institute

February 11–May 6, 2001

Julia Margaret Pattle Cameron

The Angel at the Sepulchre

1869 (Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute)

The wide range of subjects depicted by Victorian photographers is well represented in this selection of works dating from the 1840s through the 1860s: from Egypt to the English countryside, from still lifes to portraits. The exhibition focuses in particular on the "golden age" of the 1860s, when British photography developed from a hobbyist's pastime to a commercial art form. Works by Julia Margaret Cameron, Roger Fenton, William Henry Fox Talbot, Benjamin Brecknell Turner, John Murray, Francis Frith, and Camille Silvy are featured. The photographs are drawn from the Clark's growing collection of early photography, begun in May 1998 as the first new area of collecting since the Institute opened to the public in 1955.