Elinor and Lucy Llewelyn
1853–56
Medium
Salted paper print
Dimensions
Image: 12.4 × 10.5 cm (4 7/8 × 4 1/8 in.)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.382 (7)
Tags
About this artwork
This photographs titled "Elinor and Lucy Llewelyn" by John Dillwyn Llewelyn dates to 1853–56. Executed in salted paper print, this work exemplifies the craftsmanship associated with Photographs. The piece demonstrates the technical skill and artistic vision characteristic of its period. The work's presence in a major museum collection attests to its significance in the broader narrative of art history. As part of institutional holdings, it serves both scholarly research and public education, off...
Art Historical Context
In the mid-1850s, Welsh photographer John Dillwyn Lelyn captured a tender moment with *Elinor and Lucy Lelyn*, a salted paper print portraying two young girls, likely his daughters. This intimate portrait reflects the era's fascination with photography as a novel way to preserve family life, when cameras were still rare and cumbersome tools wielded by scientific pioneers like Llewelyn, a botanist turned early adopter of the medium. The salted paper print, one of the first practical photographic processes invented by William Henry Fox Talbot in the 1830s, involved coating paper with salt and s...
About the Artist
John Dillwyn Llewelyn
John Dillwyn Llewelyn (1810–1882) was a pioneering Welsh photographer and botanist whose innovative images captured the dramatic landscapes of his Penllergare estate and the Welsh coast. Born on 12 January 1810 in Swansea as the eldest son of botanist Lewis Weston Dillwyn and Mary Dillwyn, he inherited the Penllergare estate from his maternal grandfather, Colonel John Llewelyn, upon coming of age ...