"Photo of the Victorian era" in the Zurab Tsereteli Gallery of Art

The exhibition “Photography of the Victorian era” was prepared on the basis of the ROSPHOTO collection and the British collection “Pre-Raphaelitism in the Art of Photography”, donated by the British Council to the Tomsk Regional Museum of Art.

D.G. Rossetti. Jane Morris. 1865 TOMX

The main part of the exposition covers the 1850-1870s and is devoted to an important period not only in the history of English photography, but also in the history of all English art - the period known as the "Victorian era". Its significance is determined both by the growing interest of photographers in art, and the desire of photography itself to enter the pantheon of fine arts. The result of this desire was the development of the direction of art photography, in which the authors, based on various combinations of real and artificial, are looking for picturesque techniques that reflect their creative and cultural interests.

D.M. Cameron Angel at the tomb. 1869 TOMX

D.M. Cameron Call me, I’m coming, I’m coming, let me die. 1867 TOMX

During this period, the interests of English artists and photographers coincide. Both in painting and in photography, artists find inspiration in the images of medieval painting, literature and poetry, and they turn to both religious themes and everyday life.

The exhibition presents photographic works by famous authors included in the Pre-Raphaelite circle, among them Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Julia Margaret Cameron, Henry Peach Robinson, Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), and other Victorian masters who left a significant mark in the history of photography. Among them is Roger Fenton, the head of the London Photographic Society and the first official military photographer, Lady Clementine Havarden, one of the first women photographers to receive the first ever amateur collection award in photography history. The exposition includes a portrait of Alice Liddell, the girl who became the muse of Lewis Carroll, to whom he dedicated the wonderful works “Alice in Wonderland” and “Alice in Through the Looking Glass”.

G.P. Robinson. The arrival of May. 1862 TOMX

G.P. Robinson. Elaine, contemplating the shield of Lancelot, 1859 Volume

The second part of the exhibition presents a gift album with views of the cities, historical places and monuments of Scotland. Similar species photography albums were widely distributed in the second half of the 19th century among the upper and middle classes of Great Britain. The main author of the album is James Valentine, a Scottish photographer who specialized in shooting for ready-made albums and photo cards, including those from the 1850s and his own printing company Valentine & Sons. 38 photographs were made using the wet callodion technique invented by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851. With the development of new technologies, the wet collodion process was transferred from a glass plate to paper.

CHL Dodgson Alice Liddell as a beggar. 1859 TOMX

CHL Dodgson Arthur Hughes with daughter Agnes. 1863 TOMX

The album also included 12 prints of another major master of species photography, which shot mainly the architectural and natural landscapes of Scotland, England and Northern Ireland - George Washington Wilson, whose main photo archive (40,000 units) is stored in the collection of the University of Aberdeen (Scotland). These works were done using the photomechanical printing method, the “woodburitipia,” patented by Walter Bentley Woodbury in 1864.

This collection includes such photographic genres as architectural, landscape, portrait, reportage and scientific photography. The items of the collection, although performed at different levels of professional excellence, have an extremely high historical, historical, technological and artistic value.

The exhibition will be held from April 15 to May 31, 2015.

Venue: Museum and Exhibition Complex PAX Zurab Tsereteli Art Gallery (Prechistenka, 19)