Jerusalem from the City Wall
1857
Medium
Albumen print, pl. 36 from the album "Egypt and Palestine, Volume I" (1858)
Dimensions
Image/paper: 16.4 × 23.1 cm (6 1/2 × 9 1/8 in.); Album page: 29.4 × 42.6 cm (11 5/8 × 16 13/16 in.)
Classification
photograph
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
157968
Art Historical Context
**Jerusalem from the City** (1857) by Francisith captures a sweeping vista of the ancient city from its historic ramparts, plate 36 from his landmark album *Egypt and Palestine Volume I* (1858). A pioneering British photographer, Fr embarked on daring expeditions to the Middle East in the 1850s, hauling bulky cameras and chemicals across deserts to document biblical landscapes for European audiences. This image, now in the Art Institute of Chicago Photography and Media Department, offers a rare mid-19th-century glimpse of Jerusalem's skyline, domes, and walls largely unchanged since Ottoman ti...
About the Artist
Francis Frith · 1822–1898
Francis Frith (1822–1898) was born on 7 October 1822 in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, into a prosperous Quaker merchant family as the second child and only son of Francis Frith Sr. and Alice Walker. Educated at Quaker schools including Ackworth and Camp Hill in Birmingham from around 1828 to 1838, he apprenticed in the cutlery trade before establishing himself as a wholesale grocer in Liverpool, suppl...