Untitled (River, Hong Kong or Macau, China) (1866–73): Art, History and Details

Untitled (River, Hong Kong or Macau, China) (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:

A young art form, photography had not yet fully developed its own visual traditions when William Pryor Floyd was working, so he often borrowed compositional formats from classical landscape painting. Here, he instead daringly placed the stream right in the middle of this composition. It wends its way in gentle S curves into the distance, drawing the viewer’s eye up and across the picture plane, until it disappears into distant trees.

Object facts

• Title: Untitled (River, Hong Kong or Macau, China)
• Date: 1866–73
• Creator attribution: William Pryor Floyd (British, 1834–c. 1900)
• Culture: England, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print
• Dimensions: Image: 21.9 x 27.9 cm (8 5/8 x 11 in.); Paper: 21.9 x 27.9 cm (8 5/8 x 11 in.); Mounted: 26.8 x 34.1 cm (10 9/16 x 13 7/16 in.)
• Collection: PH - British 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 2020.235

A detail from the museum

A photographer’s choice of viewpoint and framing can radically change how we see a landscape.

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.