Lady Ruthven
Medium
Salted paper print from paper negative
Dimensions
19.9 x 15 cm (7 13/16 x 5 7/8 in.)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Rubel Collection, Purchase, Manfred Heiting and Lila Acheson Wallace Gifts, 1997
Accession Number
1997.382.18
Tags
Art Historical Context
**Lady Ruthven**, a captivating salted paper print from a paper negative created around 1845 by the pioneering Scottish partnership of David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, offers a window into the birth of photography. Hill, a noted painter, teamed up with technical whiz Adamson in 1843 to master the calotype process—an early negative-positive technique invented by William Henry Fox Talbot. This allowed for multiple prints from a single paper negative, revolutionizing image reproduction just a decade after photography's invention. Measuring a intimate 19.9 x 15 cm, this portrait exemplifie...
About the Artist
David Octavius Hill|Robert Adamson|Hill and Adamson · 1802–1870
David Octavius Hill (1802–1870) was a Scottish painter, photographer, and arts administrator whose pioneering photography partnership with Robert Adamson from 1843 to 1847 transformed the medium into an art form. Born in Perth and trained in Edinburgh, Hill established himself as a landscape painter and became secretary of the Royal Scottish Academy, a position he held for nearly forty years. His ...