Scotch Firs, Hawkhurst (1853): Art, History and Details

Scotch Firs, Hawkhurst (1853) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Benjamin Brecknell Turner (British, 1815–1894).

The work and its context

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

Despite the Industrial Revolution, Benjamin Brecknell Turner portrayed the English countryside as stable, harmonious, and unchanging—a place where nature and humanity coexist in complete harmony. Here the artist captured a pastoral scene in Surrey, combining towering trees, houses, and farm buildings to create a skillful blend of rustic domesticity and charming landscape. Preferring to photograph at an angle, Turner's composition is enlivened by the strong diagonals found in the receding lines of trees, fence, and pathway, which lead the viewer in an orderly progression from foreground to background. According to family tradition, Scotch Firs, Hawkhurst was so admired by Queen Victoria's husband Prince Albert that Turner presented him with a print of the photograph in 1853.

Object facts

• Title: Scotch Firs, Hawkhurst
• Date: 1853
• Creator attribution: Benjamin Brecknell Turner (British, 1815–1894)
• Culture: England, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print from calotype
• Dimensions: Image: 28.6 x 39.1 cm (11 1/4 x 15 3/8 in.); Matted: 50.8 x 61 cm (20 x 24 in.)
• Collection: Photography
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1988.239

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.