Caswell Garden; Geneviève
1853–56
Medium
Salted paper print
Dimensions
Image: 12.8 × 11 cm (5 1/16 × 4 5/16 in.) (a) Image: 11.5 × 8.8 cm (4 1/2 × 3 7/16 in.) (b)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.382 (12a, b)
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the mid-1850s, Welsh photographer John Dillwyn Lelyn captured the serene beauty of *Caswell Garden; Geneviève* using the salted paper print process, a pioneering technique from the calotype era invented by William Henry Fox Talbot. This pair of intimate images—one measuring 12.8 × 11 cm and the other11.5 × 8.8 cm—depicts a lush garden setting at Llewelyn's family estate in Caswell, Wales, a woman and an infant named Geneviève. The soft, matte tones and subtle details characteristic of salted paper prints evoke the experimental spirit of early photography, where salt-treated paper was contac...
About the Artist
John Dillwyn Llewelyn
John Dillwyn Llewelyn (1810–1882) was a pioneering Welsh photographer and botanist whose innovative images captured the dramatic landscapes of his Penllergare estate and the Welsh coast. Born on 12 January 1810 in Swansea as the eldest son of botanist Lewis Weston Dillwyn and Mary Dillwyn, he inherited the Penllergare estate from his maternal grandfather, Colonel John Llewelyn, upon coming of age ...