The Italian Baroque and the Birth of Art Photography in England

28 November 2017
12:30 – 2:00 pm
Seminar Room, Paul Mellon Centre

A Fellows Lunch by Phillip Prodger, Head of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery and Paul Mellon Centre Rome Fellow.

In the 1850s, fuelled in part by the invention of the rapid wet-plate collodion process, a new wave of photographers began to explore the medium’s expressive potential. Among these ‘art photographers’ were an unlikely group of four practitioners whose biographies closely intersected: the Swedish émigré Oscar Rejlander, the Ceylonese expatriate Julia Margaret Cameron, Oxford mathematician Lewis Carroll, and the Countess Clementina, Lady Hawarden. Of these, all but Hawarden, whose career was cut short by her untimely death at the age of forty-three, were strongly influenced by Italian painting and sculpture. The current research represents the first concerted attempt to examine and explain specific points of contact, especially in Rome.

Cameron, who never travelled to Rome personally, encountered works in reproduction. The influence of Roman collections in her production was nevertheless extensive. Among the works she referenced were Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne, (Galleria Borghese), Guido Reni’s Madonna and Child (Galleria Doria Pamphilj), and Reni’s Beatrice Cenci (Palazzo Barberini, attribution disputed).

It has long been supposed that Rejlander visited Rome twice, once in the 1830s, and again in 1852. Research has revealed that accounts of the 1830s visit were most likely apocryphal, but the 1852 trip did indeed occur, with pronounced effect. Rejlander sent examples of his work to Pope Pius IX, and the influence of Vatican collections, including Raphael’s School of Athens, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling, and numerous works in the Vatican Pinacoteca has now been firmly established. Rejlander’s progression through the great collections of Rome has also been confirmed through analysis of motifs that would later appear in his photography. The Capitolini and Palazzo Corsini collections were particularly influential, the latter where Reni’s Salome with Head of St John inspired Rejlander to produce his famous Head of St John on a Charger (Royal Collections, Windsor).

Research revealed the particular influence of the Italian Baroque and works of the Bologna School, a connection which has never previously been noted. This calls into question the oft-repeated claim that the art photographers comprised a ‘Pre-Raphaelite School’, since their primary influences were clearly later. This has significant implications not just for the understanding of the origins of art photography, but also for understanding the Pre-Raphaelites themselves, and the development of nineteenth century British art more broadly. A link is theorised between the acute interest in emotional expression during the Baroque period and photography’s increasing capacity to freeze motion in time, enabled by wet-plate collodion technology.

Image:

Oscar Rejlander, Unknown Woman, 1860-66, albumen print, National Portrait Gallery, NPG P2011

The Fellows Lunch Series is a series of free lunchtime research talks given by recipients of Paul Mellon Centre Fellowships. All are welcome but please book a ticket in advance.

About the speaker

Phillip Prodger, Ph.D. (Cantab.) is 2017 Mellon Centre Rome Fellow and Head of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery. Previously, Prodger has held posts at the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts, and the National Gallery of Canada. A specialist in 19th century British photography, previous writings include Darwin’s Camera (Oxford, 2009), and Time Stands Still: Muybridge and the Instantaneous Photography Movement (Oxford, 2003).

Italian Royal Furniture at Attingham Park

16 Oct 2018

‘Monad to Man’: Gendering Shifting Natural Histories in the Index Museum

Research Lunch

‘Monad to Man’: Gendering Shifting Natural Histories in the Index Museum

06 Nov 2018

Research Lunch

“Starting from that earth”: Humanized Landscape, Rastafarian Painting and Anticolonial Visions in 1970s Kingston

About the speaker

Related events

**CANCELLED** Articulating British Asian Art Histories

Domenico Brucciani and the wandering Italians of nineteenth-century Britain

"Newly Invented Original Paintings": Philip Mercier and the Origins of the British Fancy Picture

Russia and the South Kensington Museum: A case study in collecting and cultural diplomacy

Articulating British Asian Art Histories

William Morris's Red House

‘What can six apples not be?’: Still Life and Modern British Writers

No Man’s Land: Women’s Photography and the First World War

Collaborative curating: Journeys with 'The Waste Land'

Radical Visions: the early history of Four Corners and Camerawork 1972-1987

Basic Instincts - Exhibition and Publication

Italian Royal Furniture at Attingham Park

‘Monad to Man’: Gendering Shifting Natural Histories in the Index Museum

Communities of Curating: Professional Networks in World Cultures Museum Practice, 1945-1980

A Postcard Tour of Rome

'A Devious Route’: Building products and the emergence of the architect-shopper in 1930s Britain

Researching Black Queer Artistic Life Histories: Berto Pasuka in Jamaica, Britain and France

Pre-Raphaelite Gold

*Postponed* Video Activism in London: 1969–1993

“Starting from that earth”: Humanized Landscape, Rastafarian Painting and Anticolonial Visions in 1970s Kingston

Part of

Fellows Lunch Series

CANCELLED Articulating British Asian Art Histories

Postponed Video Activism in London: 1969–1993