Roger Fenton

salt print, title, date, and photographer's and publisher's credit in letterpress, the 'T. Agnew and Sons' blindstamp, and annotation in pencil on the mount, circa 1855

Robert Hershkowitz, Ltd., Sussex, 1993

Santa Barbara Museum of Art, in conjunction with Delacroix to Monet: Masterpieces of 19th Century Painting from the Walters Art Museum, January - May 2010

Gordon Baldwin, Roger Fenton: Pasha and Bayadere (The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996), p. 55

Remarkable care has been taken in arranging this self-portrait tableau, and this print delivers fascinating detail: from the cigarette dangling from Fenton's lips, to the bottle and cask by his side, to the sheepskin-covered pedestal upon which he perches. Fenton purposefully gazes and directs his cocked rifle out of the frame. Grading this salt print on a scale of 1 to 10 - a 10 being a print with rich, deep-brown dark tones, and highlights that retain all of their original detail - this print rates a 10. There is minor yellowing at the left and right edges. Upon the close examination, 2 pen-point-sized matte deposits of indeterminate nature are visible under the gun. The print is on a large embossed paper mount. The following is in letterpress on the mount: 'Zouave 2nd Division'; 'Photographed by R. Fenton Manchester Published by T. Agnew & Sons, March 25th, 1856. / London, P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. Paris, Moulin, 23, Rue Richer New York, Williams & Co'; and 'Deposé.' 'Roger Fenton dressed as a Zouave' is also written in an unidentified hand in pencil on the mount. There is moderate foxing on the front and reverse of the mount, not affecting the image. The periphery of the mount is faintly age-darkened, the lower right corner is heavily creased, and there are small tears at the mount's edges.
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Taken in 1855 during the Crimean campaign, the present self-portrait depicts Fenton as a swashbuckling Zouave, with the capacious trousers, leather greaves, wide sash, and turban characteristic of the exotic French mercenaries.  Fenton had arrived in the Black Sea port of Balaklava armed with five cameras, a retrofitted wine merchant’s van for a roving darkroom, and a letter of introduction from Britain’s Prince Albert.  Over the next three months, he produced more than 350 negatives, many of which were published as engravings in the Illustrated London News, and later in three portfolios of photographs by Thomas Agnew & Sons.  These Crimean War series are among the earliest photographs taken during war.

Fenton’s photographs of British officers and troops, their life in camp, and the battlefields of the Crimea were exhibited in the fall of 1855 to great acclaim at the Gallery of the Water-Colour Society, London.  A review in the Illustrated London News suggests that the present image and a variant were included in the exhibition: ‘Two new Zouaves deserve particular mention—one seated in great comfort on the cloak of a Russian officer, and though not unmindful of creature comforts, as the vessels beside him indicate, is also bent on his duty, and is cocking his formidable weapon, with a keen glance at some outlying Russian; the other in a pose of less animation, but equal merit’ (10 November 1855).