Scène d’Octobre: La jeune poitrinaire (An October Scene: The Young Consumptive), from "Le Journal Illustré" no. 34

Henry Peach Robinson

October 2–9, 1864 · Wood engraving · Drawings and Prints

This wood engraving reproduces a famous pictorial photograph constructed by Henry Peach Robinson in 1858. To portray the peaceful death of a young girl surrounded by her grieving family, Robinson skillfully combined five different negatives. Although imaginary, many contemporaries criticized the subject as too painful to be tastefully rendered by such a literal medium as photography. The controversy made Robinson the most famous photographer in England and a leader of the Pictorialist movement which advocated painterly effects. Wood engravings played a crucial part in circulating images in the nineteenth century, here in a French publication "Le Journal Illustré."

Artist

Henry Peach Robinson

Date

October 2–9, 1864

Medium

Wood engraving

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Gift of Donato Esposito, 2015