The Boating Party
1853–56
Medium
Salted paper print
Dimensions
Image: 15.5 × 20 cm (6 1/8 × 7 7/8 in.)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.382 (23)
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the serene world of early photography with *The Boating Party*, a salted paper print by Welsh pioneer John Dillwyn Llewelyn, created between 1853 and 1856. Llewelyn, a botanist and avid experimenter, was among the first in Britain to embrace the calotype process invented by William Henry Fox Talbot. This intimate scene captures men and women enjoying a leisurely boat outing, evoking the genteel pleasures of Victorian recreation amid natural settings. The salted paper print, a hallmark of 1840s–1850s photography, involves sensitizing paper with salt and silver nitrate, then printing ...
About the Artist
John Dillwyn Llewelyn
John Dillwyn Llewelyn (1810–1882) was a pioneering Welsh photographer and botanist whose innovative images captured the dramatic landscapes of his Penllergare estate and the Welsh coast. Born on 12 January 1810 in Swansea as the eldest son of botanist Lewis Weston Dillwyn and Mary Dillwyn, he inherited the Penllergare estate from his maternal grandfather, Colonel John Llewelyn, upon coming of age ...