View from the Lawn, Dennicanniby (1870s): Art, History and Details

View from the Lawn, Dennicanniby (1870s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Vernon Heath (British, 1819–1895).

The work and its context

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

A distinguished photographer who received royal patronage, Vernon Heath traveled extensively throughout the British Isles documenting estates and landscapes on commission. This carefully composed scenic view, taken just above the Upper Lake of Three Lakes of Killarney in southwest Ireland, exemplifies the pioneering technique he developed in the early 1860s for enlarging 12x10-inch glass negatives. Made when contact printing was the norm, Heath’s carbon-printed enlargements showed no distortion and preserved the general artistic effect, which brought praise from the photographic press. Through his outstanding ability to manipulate wet collodion plates in the field, he excelled at controlling light and rendering aerial perspective. Indeed, Heath was highly acclaimed for the pictorial detail and faithful description of the picturesque scenes his Victorian audience so admired. By 1871 the carbon pigment process was his preferred method for printing. It produced a softening effect and greater gradation of tone in his photographs while rendering them impervious to fading caused by natural light.

Object facts

• Title: View from the Lawn, Dennicanniby
• Date: 1870s
• Creator attribution: Vernon Heath (British, 1819–1895)
• Culture: England, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: carbon print
• Dimensions: Image: 58.5 x 72.5 cm (23 1/16 x 28 9/16 in.); Matted: 81.3 x 96.5 cm (32 x 38 in.)
• Collection: PH - British 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 2000.85

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hinson, Tom E., "Focus on Landscape ", Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. Vol. 44 no. 03, March 2004

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.