St. Andrews
Medium
Salted paper print from paper negative
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1937
Accession Number
37.98.1.5
Tags
Art Historical Context
**St. Andrews** (1843–47) is a captivating salted paper print from a paper negative, created by the pioneering Scottish photographic duo David Octavius and Robert Adamson, often credited together as Hill and Adamson This early photograph captures the evocative ruins of St. Andrews in Fife, Scotland—a once-grand medieval structure reduced to atmospheric stone remnants against a moody sky. As part of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's (Harris Brisbane Dick Fund 1937), it the dawn of photography in the 1840s, when the medium was transitioning from scientific novelty to artistic expression. Hill, a...
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 ...