Arch in Farmyard, Swansea (1845): Art, History and Details

Arch in Farmyard, Swansea (1845) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Calvert Richard Jones (British, 1804–1877).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Educated as a mathematician, musician, and clergyman, Jones was an accomplished daguerreotypist before he was introduced to the calotype by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1845. Jones's pictures were taken primarily in Wales, England, Ireland, and the Mediterranean and often depicted complex compositions of ruins, landscape, and rustic architecture. To provide a sense of scale and human presence, he almost always included figures in his architectural views (here a lone individual leans against the archway). In this photograph Jones also alluded to the inevitable passage of time by contrasting the monumental arch in the foreground with the ruined arch in the distance.

Object facts

• Title: Arch in Farmyard, Swansea
• Date: 1845
• Creator attribution: Calvert Richard Jones (British, 1804–1877)
• Culture: England, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: salted paper print from calotype negative, gold-toned
• Dimensions: Image: 23.2 x 18.7 cm (9 1/8 x 7 3/8 in.); Matted: 50.8 x 40.6 cm (20 x 16 in.)
• Collection: PH - British 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1991.40

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hinson, Tom E. "Notable Acquisitions." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 78, no. 3 (1991): 63-147.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.