Mount Washington, Massachusetts, July 22, 1890 (1890): Art, History and Details

Mount Washington, Massachusetts, July 22, 1890 (1890) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Robert Stuart Redfield (American, 1849–1923).

The work and its context

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

At the turn of the 20th century, Redfield was a leading proponent of staging simple genre scenes outdoors, instead of being limited to a studio setting. Here, the Philadelphia-born photographer carefully positioned three children in the foreground of this picturesque landscape dominated by a split-rail and stone fence. The print features his interests in clarity and fidelity and atmospheric effects. In this rural scene, he used the warm, delicate tonal range of a platinum print to render subtle variations and nuances of light. For two decades around 1900, Redfield was a leading advocate of photography as fine art and was one of the founders of the Photo-Secession. He sought to convince an audience accustomed to viewing photographs as simple recorded fact that they were beautiful images able to convey emotion.

Object facts

• Title: Mount Washington, Massachusetts, July 22, 1890
• Date: 1890
• Creator attribution: Robert Stuart Redfield (American, 1849–1923)
• Culture: America
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: platinum print
• Dimensions: Image: 19.3 x 24.1 cm (7 5/8 x 9 1/2 in.); Matted: 40.6 x 50.8 cm (16 x 20 in.)
• Collection: PH - American 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1994.279

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• 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.