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Lindisfarne Priory, Holy Isle

Creator

Photographer · 1819–1869

Artist

After studying law in London, Roger Fenton trained as a painter in London and Paris. He exhibited his paintings and helped found a drawing school that gave evening instruction to working men in London. Active in the arts, Fenton corresponded with French photographers Gustave Le Gray and Henri Le Secq, which may have led him to pursue photography. Fenton's photographic career was brilliant yet brie

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Date: 1856
Medium: Salted paper print
Culture: English
Department: Photographs
Institution: Getty Museum
Object ID: 698e9d04-d258-41bb-9a2c-d2fc35ef9d78

From the Getty Museum record

Roger Fenton described the French architectural photographs he had seen in Paris as "subjects?equally interesting to the antiquarian and the lover of the picturesque." He could easily have been writing about his own work. The French government's commissions to document and preserve their national historical monuments greatly impressed Fenton. A similar preservation movement, privately funded, was thriving in England when he undertook a series of photographs of Lindisfarne Priory in Northumbria. In this image, the soaring arch over the crossing of nave and transept still stands triumphant amidst the rubble. The seated figure in the foreground lends dramatic evidence of the original structure's massive scale, still intact enough to reveal its vaulted splendor.

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