Works included in this catalogue
Fenton & others Cathedrals and Abbeys in England and Scotland {1860} SLV [PH]
Fenton, Bedford & others England and Wales {1860} SLV [PH]
Fenton & others Palaces, Castles & Seats in England {1860} SLV [PH]
Fenton was a pioneering British photographer who made his name with a famous set of images of the Crimean War (1853-56). He frequently worked in collaboration with Bedford and others.
Fenton’s work has been given detailed critical and scholarly attention in recent years. For instance, two stimulating essays by Daniel Harris and Mike Weaver (in Weaver 1989) shed light on Fenton’s creative interaction with literary and fine art traditions of the period, Weaver concluding that “he was, indeed, the photographer laureate of the High Victorian age.”
The albums of photographs listed here, along with others by Frith and Macpherson (see e.g. Macpherson Photographs of Rome {1860/61} SLV [PH]), also purchased in 1860, were amongst the earliest acquisitions for the Melbourne collection as a whole.
Refs.
For Fenton, see AKL 38 (2003), pp.196-97; and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Fenton, citing Gordon Baldwin & others, All the mighty world: the photographs of Roger Fenton, 1852-1860, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004
The two essays mentioned appear in Mike Weaver (ed.), British Photography in the 19th Century: The Fine Art Tradition, Cambridge UP, 1989, pp.95-101 (David Harris, “Photography and Topography: Tintern Abbey”) and 103-120 (Mike Weaver, “Roger Fenton: Landscape and Still Life”; the quote is from p.120)