The exhibition «Photography of the Victorian Age» comprises the art pieces from the ROSPHOTO’s collection and from the collection «Pre-Raphaelitism in Photography», which was donated by the British Council to the Tomsk Regional Art Museum in 2001.
The exhibition covers the period of 1850–1870s and is dedicated to the important stage in the history of the British photography as well as in the history of the British art in general. That period is named the «Victorian Age» and is characterized by the growing interest of the photographers to the classic art and by the photography’s aspiration to join the circle of fine arts. The artists derived inspiration from the medieval painting and literature and used to turn to the religious and everyday life subjects.
The exhibition features the works by the renowned members of the Pre-Raphaelites movement: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Julia Margaret Cameron, Henry Peach Robinson, Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) and other notable photographers and artists of the Victorian Era. These include Roger Fenton, the head of the London-based photographic society and the first official war photographer and Lady Clementina Hawarden, a female pioneer of British photography, the winner of the first best amateur photo prize.
The second part of the exhibition is dedicated to the gift edition representing the views of the cities, towns and monuments of Scotland.Such albums were very popular in the second half of the XIX century among the upper and middle class of the British society. The album was created by James Valentine, a Scottish landscape photographer and producer of landscape albums and photo post cards. The album also contains 12 photo prints of another well-known landscape photographer — George Washington Wilson, the cher maître of natural and architectural landscape photography of Scotland, England and Northern Ireland.
The featured art pieces represent various photo styles including architectural, landscape, portrait, reportage and scientific photography. All the items on view are of special historical, artistic and scientific importance.
EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMME
Lectures will be held at: 35 Bolshaya Morskaya St., ROSPHOTO, 3 rd floor, conference hall
Admission fee for one lecture: 250 RUR
Booking is required at curator@rosphoto.org
- 15 January, 19:00
Overview of English Art of the 19th Century
Speaker: Natalia Semenovna Gurkina, Ph.D. in Art History, Associate Professor at the Stieglitz Art and Industry Academy.
This session will be a discussion of the aesthetic views of the Pre-Raphaelites.It will include a summing-up of the contribution of Pre-Raphaelitism to the development of world art. Victorian views on the role and image of women in art and photography will also be explained. Visitors will be able to see the paintings that influenced 19th-century photographers, as well as the photographs that were used as sketches for paintings. - 22 January, 19:00
Aestheticism in Victorian England
Speaker: Andrey Astvatsaturov, Associate Professor of the Interdisciplinary Research in Languages and Literature Department, Ph. D. in Philology.
During the Victorian era, Great Britain finally became a powerful, free, highly developed, ultra-modern colonial empire. This was the time of pragmatic, efficient politicians and educated bourgeoisie confident of their abilities and their purpose, the logic of progress, and the rightness of the moral foundations of the society. But strange as it may seem, it was during this optimistic time that British culture saw the birth of a few phenomena that would undermine its very foundations. One of those phenomena was Aestheticism. - 1 February, 15:00
Reflexions of the Victorian Era
Speaker: Vadim Borisovich Vysotsky, Vice-Rector for Academic Work and External Relations of the St. Petersburg Institute of Humanities, Ph.D. in Culture Studies, Associate Professor.
The era of Britain’s economic prosperity, political and social evolution, creation of the largest colonial empire of the world and proliferation of the middle class bears the name of Queen Victoria. The nature of 19th-century British culture and the challenges of the era found expression in various art forms of the time, including photography. All these issues will be discussed in detail during this lecture on Victorian cultural codes.