Isambard Kingdom Brunel Standing Before The Launching Chains Of The Great Eastern
''Isambard Kingdom Brunel Standing Before the Launching Chains of the Great Eastern'' is a photograph taken by Robert Howlett in November 1857. It shows Brunel, the British engineer, during the troubled first attempt to launch the SS ''Great Eastern'', by far the largest ship constructed to that date. Brunel stands before a drum of chain used during the launching of the vessel; he carries his customary cigar case and his boots and trousers are muddy. Brunel is smoking a cigar and his waistcoat is askew. His pose has been described as casual and self-assured. The image has become iconic of the industrial era and the 19th century and has been included in many published collections of photographs. It was widely reproduced at the time of the ship's eventual launch in January 1858 and again after Brunel's death in 1859. Background Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a British engineer who constructed a number of innovative civil and railway engineering projects and, in 1845, the S ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Robert Howlett (Isambard Kingdom Brunel Standing Before The Launching Chains Of The Great Eastern), The Metropolitan Museum Of Art - Restoration1
Robert Howlett (3 July 1831 – 2 December 1858) was a British pioneering photographer whose pictures are widely exhibited in major galleries. Howlett produced portraits of Crimean War heroes, genre scenes and landscapes. His photographs include the iconic picture of Isambard Kingdom Brunel which was part of a commission by the London-based weekly newspaper ''Illustrated Times'' to document the construction of the world's largest steamship, the SS ''Great Eastern''. He exhibited at the London Photographic Society and published ''On the Various Methods of Printing Photographic Pictures upon Paper, with Suggestions for Their Preservation.'' He worked in partnership with Joseph Cundall at "The Photographic Institution" at New Bond Street, London. Howlett made photographic studies for the artist William Powell Frith to assist him on his vast modern panorama painting '' The Derby Day'' (1856–58; Tate, London) which was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1858. Howl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wet Plate Collodion
The collodion process is an early photographic process. The collodion process, mostly synonymous with the "collodion wet plate process", requires the photographic material to be coated, sensitized, exposed, and developed within the span of about fifteen minutes, necessitating a portable darkroom for use in the field. Collodion is normally used in its wet form, but it can also be used in dry form, at the cost of greatly increased exposure time. The increased exposure time made the dry form unsuitable for the usual portraiture work of most professional photographers of the 19th century. The use of the dry form was therefore mostly confined to landscape photography and other special applications where minutes-long exposure times were tolerable. History Gustave Le Gray first theorized about the collodion process, publishing a method in 1850 that was "theoretical at best", but Frederick Scott Archer was credited with the invention of the process, which he created in 1848 and publis ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Albumen Print
The albumen print, also called albumen silver print, was published in January 1847 by Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard, and was the first commercially exploitable method of producing a photographic print on a paper base from a negative. It used the albumen found in egg whites to bind the photographic chemicals to the paper and became the dominant form of photographic positives from 1855 to the start of the 20th century, with a peak in the 1860–90 period. During the mid-19th century, the carte de visite became one of the more popular uses of the albumen method. In the 19th century, E. & H. T. Anthony & Company were the largest makers and distributors of albumen photographic prints and paper in the United States.Welling, William. Photography in America (1978 & 1987) Creation process # A piece of paper, usually 100% cotton, is coated with an emulsion of egg white (albumen) and salt (sodium chloride or ammonium chloride), then dried. The albumen seals the paper and creates ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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National Portrait Gallery, London
The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is an art gallery in London housing a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. It was arguably the first national public gallery dedicated to portraits in the world when it opened in 1856. The gallery moved in 1896 to its current site at St Martin's Place, off Trafalgar Square, and adjoining the National Gallery (London), National Gallery. It has been expanded twice since then. The National Portrait Gallery also has regional outposts at Beningbrough Hall in Yorkshire and Montacute House in Somerset. It is unconnected to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, with which its remit overlaps. The gallery is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Collection The gallery houses portraits of historically important and famous British people, selected on the basis of the significance of the sitter, not that of the artist. The collection includes ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Charles Saumarez Smith
Sir Charles Robert Saumarez Smith (born 28 May 1954) is a British cultural historian specialising in the history of art, design and architecture. He was the Secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Arts in London from 2007 until he stepped down in 2018. He was replaced by Axel Rϋger, who took up the position in 2019. Before, he was director of the National Portrait Gallery from 1994 to 2002 and director of the National Gallery from 2002 to 2007. He has published various articles and books, including ''The Company of Artists:The Origins of the Royal Academy of Arts in London'' and was a judge at the World Architecture Festival 2014 in Singapore and the Young Masters 2014 awards in London. Saumarez Smith was knighted in the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours List. Biography Charles Saumarez Smith was born in an old rectory in the Wiltshire village of Redlynch, near Salisbury. The son of William Hanbury Saumarez Smith, a former Indian civil servant and the great-gran ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Metropolitan Museum Of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 Fifth Avenue, along the Museum Mile on the eastern edge of Central Park on Manhattan's Upper East Side, is by area one of the world's largest art museums. The first portion of the approximately building was built in 1880. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains an extensive collection of art, architecture, and artifacts from medieval Europe. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 with its mission to bring art and art education to the American people. The museum's permanent collection consists of works of art from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt, paintings, and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Stereoscopic Image
Stereoscopy (also called stereoscopics, or stereo imaging) is a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision. The word ''stereoscopy'' derives . Any stereoscopic image is called a stereogram. Originally, stereogram referred to a pair of stereo images which could be viewed using a stereoscope. Most stereoscopic methods present a pair of two-dimensional images to the viewer. The left image is presented to the left eye and the right image is presented to the right eye. When viewed, the human brain perceives the images as a single 3D view, giving the viewer the perception of 3D depth. However, the 3D effect lacks proper focal depth, which gives rise to the Vergence-Accommodation Conflict. Stereoscopy is distinguished from other types of 3D displays that display an image in three full dimensions, allowing the observer to increase information about the 3-dimensional objects being displayed by head and eye move ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Carte-de-visite
The ''carte de visite'' (, visiting card), abbreviated CdV, was a type of small photograph which was patented in Paris by photographer André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri in 1854, although first used by Louis Dodero. Each photograph was the size of a visiting card, and such photograph cards were commonly traded among friends and visitors in the 1860s. Albums for the collection and display of cards became a common fixture in Victorian parlors. The immense popularity of these card photographs led to the publication and collection of photographs of prominent persons. History and format The ''carte de visite'' was usually made of an albumen print, which was a thin paper photograph mounted on a thicker paper card. The size of a ''carte de visite'' is × mounted on a card sized × . In 1854, Disdéri had also patented a method of taking eight separate negatives on a single plate, which reduced production costs. The ''carte de visite'' was slow to gain widespread use until 1859, when Di ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Horace Harral
Horace Downey Harral (29 June 1817 – 23 January 1905) was a British wood-engraver, etcher and photographer. He was a pupil of John Orrin Smith and later joined him as a partner in an engraving firm. Harral produced prints of many Pre-Raphaelite paintings and also illustrated many British periodicals of the mid-Victorian era. He engraved Robert Howlett's photograph ''Isambard Kingdom Brunel Standing Before the Launching Chains of the Great Eastern'', one of the most famous and finest of the 19th century, for publication in the ''Illustrated Times'' in 1858. Harral also produced etchings and photographs. He is noted for an 1860s series of theatrically posed photographs of his friends. Harral once shared an office with William Luson Thomas and was later a significant shareholder in his company, which published ''The Graphic'' newspaper. Harral died a wealthy man and left the bulk of his estate to charity. Artistic career Horace Downey Harral was born in 1817 at Ipswich and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Photographic Plate
Photographic plates preceded photographic film as a capture medium in photography, and were still used in some communities up until the late 20th century. The light-sensitive emulsion of silver salts was coated on a glass plate, typically thinner than common window glass. History Glass plates were far superior to film for research-quality imaging because they were stable and less likely to bend or distort, especially in large-format frames for wide-field imaging. Early plates used the wet collodion process. The wet plate process was replaced late in the 19th century by gelatin dry plates. A view camera nicknamed "The Mammoth" weighing was built by George R. Lawrence in 1899, specifically to photograph "The Alton Limited" train owned by the Chicago & Alton Railway. It took photographs on glass plates measuring × . Glass plate photographic material largely faded from the consumer market in the early years of the 20th century, as more convenient and less fragile fil ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Brunel Harral
Isambard Kingdom Brunel (; 9 April 1806 – 15 September 1859) was a British civil engineer who is considered "one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in engineering history," "one of the 19th-century engineering giants," and "one of the greatest figures of the Industrial Revolution, hochanged the face of the English landscape with his groundbreaking designs and ingenious constructions." Brunel built dockyards, the Great Western Railway (GWR), a series of steamships including the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship, and numerous important bridges and tunnels. His designs revolutionised public transport and modern engineering. Though Brunel's projects were not always successful, they often contained innovative solutions to long-standing engineering problems. During his career, Brunel achieved many engineering firsts, including assisting in the building of the first tunnel under a navigable river (the River Thames) and the development of the , the fir ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hand-in-waistcoat
The hand-in-waistcoat (also referred to as hand-inside-vest, hand-in-jacket, hand-held-in, or hidden hand) is a gesture commonly found in portraiture during the 18th and 19th centuries. The pose appeared by the 1750s to indicate leadership in a calm and firm manner. The pose is most often associated with Napoleon Bonaparte due to its use in several portraits made by his artist, Jacques-Louis David, amongst them the 1812 painting '' Napoleon in His Study''. The pose, thought of as being stately, was copied by other portrait painters across Europe and America. Most paintings and photographs show the right hand inserted into the waistcoat/jacket, but some sitters appear with the left hand inserted. The pose was also often seen in mid-nineteenth century photography. Background The pose traces back to classical times – Aeschines, founder of a rhetoric school, suggested that speaking with an arm outside one's chiton was bad manners. The pose was used in 18th-century British portr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |