Gathering Water-Lilies
Medium
Platinum print from glass negative
Dimensions
Image: 19.7 x 29.2 cm (7 3/4 x 11 1/2 in.) Mount: 28.5 x 40.9 cm (11 1/4 x 16 1/8 in.) Sheet ((Interleaving Plate Sheet)): 28.1 x 40.6 cm (11 1/16 x 16 in.)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Purchase, Mrs. Walter Annenberg and The Annenberg Foundation Gift, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.741
Tags
Art Historical Context
In Peter Henry Emerson's *Gathering Water-Lilies* (1886), a platinum print from a glass negative, we glimpse a serene rural scene on England's watery fens. Men in small boats navigate calm waters, reaching for blooming water lilies—a nod to the traditional labor of harvesting these plants for food, medicine, or trade in the Norfolk Broads region. Captured at 19.7 x 29.2 cm, the image evokes the quiet harmony between people and nature, with soft reflections and delicate details that draw the viewer into this timeless moment. Emerson, a pioneering British photographer, championed "naturalistic ...
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 ...