Untitled (Happy Valley Cemetery, Hong Kong) (1866–73): Art, History and Details

Untitled (Happy Valley Cemetery, Hong Kong) (1866–73) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is William Pryor Floyd (British, 1834–c. 1900).

The work and its context

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

By 1865, Floyd had abandoned the merchant marine and become an assistant in a photographic studio in Shanghai. After briefly operating his own studio in Macau in 1866, he moved it to Hong Kong, which was a larger and busier port. For almost a decade, his was the most successful photographic studio in the Far East. In 1875, he closed that studio and moved to the Philippines.

Object facts

• Title: Untitled (Happy Valley Cemetery, Hong Kong)
• Date: 1866–73
• Creator attribution: William Pryor Floyd (British, 1834–c. 1900)
• Culture: England, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print
• Dimensions: Image: 20.2 x 27.4 cm (7 15/16 x 10 13/16 in.); Paper: 20.2 x 27.4 cm (7 15/16 x 10 13/16 in.); Mounted: 25.5 x 33.3 cm (10 1/16 x 13 1/8 in.)
• Collection: PH - British 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 2020.232

A detail from the museum

Floyd left his home in Cornwall, England, at age 17 to become a “boy” on a commercial sailing ship in 1851.

Collection credit

Sundry Art - Photography Fund

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.