Henry Peach Robinson

albumen print, mounted to a gilt-edged album leaf, titled by the photographer in ink on the mount, matted, framed, a Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, exhibition label on the reverse, 1857

Collection of Sir Henry James (1803-77), Director General of the Ordnance Survey, United Kingdom

Christie's South Kensington, 9 November 1989, Sale MCA 2650/MPH 3651, Lot 303

Acquired by the Quillan Collection from the above

Norfolk, Virginia, Chrysler Museum of Art, Pictorial Effect/Naturalistic Vision: The Photographs and Theories of Henry Peach Robinson and Peter Henry Emerson, July - September 1994; and traveling to:

New Jersey, Princeton University, February - March 1994

San Diego, Museum of Photographic Arts, March - May 1994

This print:

Jill Quasha, The Quillan Collection of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Photographs (New York, 1991), pl. 4

Chrysler Museum of Art, Pictorial Effect/Naturalistic Vision: The Photographs and Theories of Henry Peach Robinson and Peter Henry Emerson (Norfolk, 1994, in conjunction with the exhibition), cat. no. 7

Other prints of this image:

Margaret F. Harker, Henry Peach Robinson: Master of Photographic Art 1830-1901 (Oxford and New York, 1988), pl. 45

Maria Morris Hambourg, Pierre Apraxine, et al., The Waking Dream: Photography's First Century: Selections from the Gilman Paper Company Collection (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991, in conjunction with the exhibition), pl. 20

Robert A. Sobieszek, Masterpieces of Photography from The George Eastman House Collection (New York, 1985), fig. 34, p. 140

Grading this albumen print on a scale of 1 to 10 - 10 being an albumen print that has deep brown dark tones and highlights that retain all of their original detail - this print surpasses the high grade of 10. The print's dark tones are surprisingly deep, bordering on black. There is uneven silvering visible in the dark areas. There is a 1.5-cm. tear above the center of the left edge, and an old diagonal scuff in the print's lower right corner that is visible when the print is examined in raking light. There are a number of faint retouched spots visible in the folds of cloth. When examined very closely, a linear deposit of paper fibers is visible just above the center of the lower edge - this is visible only upon close examination. While these issues are apparent when the print is examined closely, they do not diminish the overall effect of this dramatic print. The print is mounted to heavy white paper. There is a small tear in the left side of the mount, not endangering the photograph.
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She Never Told Her Love was created as a preliminary study for one of Robinson's most famous composite photographs, the 1858 Fading Away.  The title makes reference to Shakespeare's Twelfth Night: 'She never told her love,/ But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,/ Feed on her damask cheek.'  For the photograph, Robinson used his frequent model, the young Miss Cundall, to depict the heartbroken girl alluded to in Shakespeare's lines.  Like Fading Away, She Never Told Her Love is in keeping with Romantic notions of death and dying, in this instance epitomized by an isolated and melancholic figure against the dark void.  Whereas Fading Away depicts a young girl's death from consumption, She Never Told Her Love shows the young woman wasting away, not from tuberculosis, but from unspoken and unrequited love. 

Although not used in the final version of Fading Away, She Never Told Her Love was exhibited as a stand-alone image at the Photographic Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in 1858.  The present print comes originally from the collection of Sir Henry James, Director General of the Ordnance Survey in the United Kingdom.  A photographer in his own right, James was responsible for the introduction of photography into government mapping and survey projects.  Three prints of this image have been located in the following institutional collections: The Royal Photographic Society Collection, National Media Museum, Bradford; The George Eastman House, Rochester; and The Gilman Paper Company Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Robinson began photographing in 1852, and later opened a commercial studio in 1857.  A leading champion of the medium, Robinson was convinced that in order for photography to attain the status of 'High Art,' it should make reference to literary and moral subjects.  Such subject matter was common among Victorian artists, including the Pre-Raphaelite painters and the photographers Julia Margaret Cameron (Lot 35) and Oscar Rejlander.  According to Robinson, the goal of any photographer should be to 'so render his interpretation . . . as to give evident indication of what is called feeling in art, and which almost rises to poetry' (H. P. Robinson, Pictorial Effect in Photography, London, 1869, p. 14).