Lieutenant Colonel Shadforth and Officers of the 57th
1855
Medium
Salted paper print, plate 47 from the album "Photographs Taken in the Crimea" (1856)
Dimensions
Image/paper: 16.1 × 19.2 cm (6 3/8 × 7 9/16 in.); Mount: 42.5 × 58.9 cm (16 3/4 × 23 1/4 in.)
Classification
salted paper print
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
146150
Art Historical Context
Step into the gritty reality of the Crimean War with Roger Fenton's *Lieutenant Colonel Shadforth and of the 57th* (1855), a paper print from his groundbreaking album *Photographs Taken the Crimea* (1856). Fenton, a pioneering British photographer, was dispatched to the lines in 1855 as the first official war photographer. This portrait captures the poised officers of the 57th Regiment amid the harsh conditions of the conflict between Britain, France, and Russia over Ottoman territories, offering a rare, dignified glimpse into military life far from the battlefield's chaos. Crafted as plate 4...
About the Artist
Roger Fenton · 1819–1819
Roger Fenton (1819–1869), born into a prosperous Lancashire merchant family as the son of banker and MP John Fenton, initially pursued a scholarly path, earning a first-class BA from the University of London in 1840 before studying law at University College London. He abandoned these pursuits for art, training as a painter under the history painter Charles Lucy in London by 1847—the two became clo...