Joseph Cundall
Fountains Abbey

ArtistEnglish, 1818–1895
CultureEnglish
Titles
  • Fountains Abbey
Date1856
PlaceRipon, England
MediumAlbumen silver print
DimensionsImage: 11 1/8 × 9 3/16 in. (28.3 × 23.3 cm)
Mount: 17 1/4 × 12 1/16 in. (43.8 × 30.6 cm)
Credit LineThe Sonia and Kaye Marvins Portrait Collection, museum purchase funded by Sonia and Kaye Marvins
Object number88.86
Not on view

Explore Further

Department
Photography
Special Collections
Object Type
Description

Like many early photographers, P. H.
Delamotte and Joseph Cundall were artists trained in areas other than
photography. Cundall was a painting student, and Delamotte was the son and
student of a painter and drawing master. By the early 1840s, however, both
turned their attention to photography. Cundall helped organize the Calotype
Society in 1847 and began publishing books illustrated with photography.
Delamotte exhibited works in the first photographic exhibition in 1852, and he
went on to become a licensed calotype printer and portrait maker.





Delamotte and Cundall formed a
working relationship in 1853 when Delamotte began advertising his services
through the Photographic Institute, which had been opened by Cundall. The two
artists organized the first commercial photographic auction in 1853, and
Cundall published several of Delamotte's photographs in albums. Finally, they
formed a joint venture with Photographic Views of the Progress of the Crystal
Palace Sydenham
(1852-55) and in 1856, A Photographic Tour among the
Abbeys of Yorkshire.






By the 1860s Delamotte had returned
to painting and drawing and eventually became a professor of drawing. Cundall
was influential in early British photography because of his publishing efforts,
which he continued.





Fountain Abbey is from an album,
most likely A Photographic Tour among the Abbeys of Yorkshire. The
dapper man posing gives a human element to an otherwise sterile architectural
detail. It is not a formal portrait, for that would have more carefully
identified the man.




Provenance[Lee Gallery, Winchester, Massachusetts]; purchased by MFAH, 1988.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
verso lower left in pencil "1639.2"
bottom edge in pencil "PLATE 10. FOUNTAINS ABBEY, GATE TO FOUNTAINS HALL FRONTISPIECE"

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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