When it came to landscapes, the photographs reflected the picturesque tastes of the age in fine art and the growing antiquarian interest in documenting and appreciating the past, including ancient buildings and monuments and a countryside untainted by the intrusion of modernity. Benjamin Brecknell Turner’s carefully framed large-format images embodied the approach, with Hedgerow Trees, Clerkenleap, and Worcestershire (1852–54), being an outstanding example.
Turner’s photos are notably English in the intimacy of their settings. Unlike the sublime photographs of untraversed open spaces and enormous geological features produced by the great American landscape photographers such as Carleton E. Watkins and William Henry Jackson a decade or so later, Hedgerow Trees offers no elevated viewpoint and lacks a backdrop. This is the everyday countryside—cosy and familiar.
Tellingly, when Turner contributed another of his images for inclusion in The Photographic Album for the Year 1855, assembled by the Photographic Exchange Club, he chose to support it with a few lines from The Sketch Book by Geoffrey Crayon (pseudonym of the American writer Washington Irving): ‘England does not abound in grand and sublime prospects, but rather in little home scenes of rural repose and sheltered quiet. Every antique farmhouse and the moss-grown cottage is a picture.’
This story is from the June 29, 2022 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the June 29, 2022 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds