The Boating Party

Art Historical Context

Step into the serene world of early photography with *The Boating Party*, a salted paper print by Welsh pioneer John Dillwyn Llewelyn, created between 1853 and 1856. Llewelyn, a botanist and avid experimenter, was among the first in Britain to embrace the calotype process invented by William Henry Fox Talbot. This intimate scene captures men and women enjoying a leisurely boat outing, evoking the genteel pleasures of Victorian recreation amid natural settings. The salted paper print, a hallmark of 1840s–1850s photography, involves sensitizing paper with salt and silver nitrate, then printing directly from a paper negative under sunlight. This labor-intensive "printing-out" technique yields the soft, warm tones and subtle details that give Llewelyn's image its timeless charm, preserving fleeting moments with remarkable fidelity for its era. At just 15.5 × 20 cm, it exemplifies the intimate scale of early photographs, bridging painting's artistry with photography's precision. Housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Gilman Collection, this work highlights photography's rapid evolution from scientific novelty to artistic medium. Llewelyn's family-oriented subjects, like this boating party, offer a window into 19th-century domestic life, reminding us how these fragile prints laid the foundation for modern imagemaking.

About the Artist

John Dillwyn Llewelyn · 1810–1882

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 ...