Crow-Island Stream, River Wye
1880s
Medium
Photogravure, plate XXXII from the album "The Compleat Angler or the Contemplative Man's Recreation, Volume II" (1888)
Dimensions
Image: 13.1 × 19.9 cm (5 3/16 × 7 7/8 in.); Paper: 15.7 × 22.1 cm (6 3/16 × 8 3/4 in.); Album page: 24.3 × 31.9 cm (9 5/8 × 12 9/16 in.)
Classification
photogravure
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
145638
Art Historical Context
Step into the serene world of Victorian England with *Crow-Island Stream, Riverye*, a captivating photogravure by pioneering photographer Peter Henry Emerson from the 1880s. Captured along the picturesque River Wye, this—plate XXXII from the 1888 album *The Compleat Angler the Contemplative Man's Recreation, Volume II*—evokes the contemplative spirit of Izaak Walton's 1653 fishing treatise. Emerson, a fervent advocate for "Naturalistic Photography," sought to capture unmanipulated scenes of rural life, emphasizing differential focus to mimic human vision and celebrate nature's unposed beauty. ...
About the Artist
Peter Henry Emerson · 1856–1936
Peter Henry Emerson (1856–1936) was born on May 13 at his family's sugar plantation, La Palma Estate, near Encrucijada, Cuba, to an American father, Henry Ezekiel Emerson, and British mother, Jane Harris Billing. A distant relative of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Samuel Morse, he spent his early childhood amid the island's landscapes before moving to Wilmington, Delaware, during the American Civil War ...