The Edge of the Broad
1890-1891, printed 1893
Medium
photogravure
Dimensions
image: 13.9 × 21.5 cm (5 1/2 × 8 7/16 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Robert B. Menschel and the Vital Projects Fund
Accession Number
2013.55.1.10
Art Historical Context
Peter Henry Emerson’s *The Edge of the Broad* captures the quiet beauty of the Norfolk Broads, a wetland region in eastern England that the photographer knew intimately. Created between 1890 and 1891 and printed in 1893 a photogravure, the modest-sized image reflects Emerson’s lifelong dedication to portraying rural life with honesty and restraint. Rather than staging picturesque scenes, he sought to record the subtle rhythms of water, sky, and marshland as they appeared to the eye. Emerson championed photography as a fine art at a time when many still viewed the medium as merely mechanical. ...
About the Artist
Peter Henry Emerson · 1856–1936
Peter Henry Emerson (1856–1936) was born on May 13 at his family's sugar plantation, La Palma Estate, near Encrucijada, Cuba, to an American father, Henry Ezekiel Emerson, and British mother, Jane Harris Billing. A distant relative of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Samuel Morse, he spent his early childhood amid the island's landscapes before moving to Wilmington, Delaware, during the American Civil War ...