The Memnonium, Thebes, from the Plain
1857
Medium
Albumen print, pl. 35 from the album "Egypt and Palestine, Volume I" (1858)
Dimensions
Image/paper: 16 × 22.7 cm (6 5/16 × 8 15/16 in.); Album page: 29.1 × 42.6 cm (11 1/2 × 16 13/16 in.)
Classification
photograph
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
157967
Art Historical Context
Step into the sun-baked vastness of ancient Egypt with Francis Frith's *The Memnonium,bes, from the Plain (1857), an albumen print that captures the majestic ruins of the Memnonium—the mortuary temple of Pharaoh Amenhotep III—from the surrounding plain. Frith, a pioneering British photographer, into Egypt during the mid-19th century,aving harsh conditions to document these monumental sites. This image, plate 35 from his landmark album *Egypt and Palestine Volume I* (1858), showcases the temple's colossal columns and weathered grandeur against a stark, open landscape, evoking the timeless allur...
About the Artist
Francis Frith · 1822–1898
Francis Frith (1822–1898) was born on 7 October 1822 in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, into a prosperous Quaker merchant family as the second child and only son of Francis Frith Sr. and Alice Walker. Educated at Quaker schools including Ackworth and Camp Hill in Birmingham from around 1828 to 1838, he apprenticed in the cutlery trade before establishing himself as a wholesale grocer in Liverpool, suppl...