The Royal Stag (c. 1870): Art, History and Details

The Royal Stag (c. 1870) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is James Valentine (British, 1815–1880).

The work and its context

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

One of the earliest photographs in this exhibition, James Valentine’s Royal Stag possesses a rare spontaneity, both for photographs of this period and for still-life images in general. In photographing a royal stag (one with antlers of twelve or more branches), Valentine gave the animal the appearance of one that had just fallen in the bright light of midday. Because the technology of the day required a nearby darkroom where the exposed negative plate could be processed immediately, it is likely that the felled stag was arranged into its artistic pose by the photographer or his staff. Valentine was a distinguished topographical and landscape photographer, printer, and publisher whose Dundee-based company became the largest and best equipped in the United Kingdom. His accomplishments were recognized when in 1868 he was appointed Photographer to the Queen.

Object facts

• Title: The Royal Stag
• Date: c. 1870
• Creator attribution: James Valentine (British, 1815–1880)
• Culture: England, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print from wet collodion negative
• Dimensions: Image: 18.7 x 23.9 cm (7 3/8 x 9 7/16 in.); Matted: 40.6 x 50.8 cm (16 x 20 in.)
• Collection: Photography
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1992.333

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1992.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 2 (February 1993): 38–79.
• 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.