A Sailing Match at Horning
1885, printed 1886
Medium
Platinum print, pl. IV from the album "Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads" (1886)
Dimensions
Image/paper: 22.5 × 28.8 cm (8 7/8 × 11 3/8 in.); Album page: 28.6 × 40.5 cm (11 5/16 × 16 in.)
Classification
platinum print
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
48803
Art Historical Context
**A Sailing Match at Horning** (1885, printed 1886) captures the lively spirit of rural England by pioneering photographer Peter Henry Emerson. As plate IV from his seminal album *Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads* (1886), this image depicts a spirited sailing race at Horning, a picturesque village amid the interconnected rivers and lakes of East Anglia's Norfolk Broads. Emerson, a doctor-turned-photographer, immersed himself in this watery wilderness to document the everyday lives of wherrymen, fishermen, and locals, celebrating their harmony with nature in the late Victorian era. Pri...
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 ...