A Stiff Pull
1880s, printed 1887
Medium
Photogravure
Dimensions
20.8 x 28.9 cm. (8 3/16 x 11 3/8 in.)
Classification
Photographs|Prints
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
David Hunter McAlpin Fund, 1948
Accession Number
48.105.69
Tags
Art Historical Context
Peter Henry Emerson’s “A Stiff Pull,” created in the 1880s and printed as a photogravure in 1887, depicts farmers and horses engaged in the demanding work of the English countryside. Emerson, a pioneering advocate of naturalistic photography, rejected the artificial studio arrangements common at the time in favor of straightforward views of rural life. His images celebrate the rhythms of agricultural labor while emphasizing the dignity of ordinary people and animals within their landscape. The choice of photogravure was deliberate. This intaglio printing process translated Emerson’s negatives...
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 ...