Cleveland Museum of Art

Mount Washington, Massachusetts, July 22, 1890

Robert Stuart Redfield

Date

1890

Medium

platinum print

Culture

America

Department

Photography

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

At the turn of the 20th century, Redfield was a leading proponent of staging simple genre scenes outdoors, instead of being limited to a studio setting. Here, the Philadelphia-born photographer carefully positioned three children in the foreground of this picturesque landscape dominated by a split-rail and stone fence. The print features his interests in clarity and fidelity and atmospheric effects. In this rural scene, he used the warm, delicate tonal range of a platinum print to render subtle variations and nuances of light. For two decades around 1900, Redfield was a leading advocate of photography as fine art and was one of the founders of the Photo-Secession. He sought to convince an audience accustomed to viewing photographs as simple recorded fact that they were beautiful images able to convey emotion.

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