Lot 208: REJLANDER, OSCAR GUSTAVE (1813-1875, photographer and painter)

SELF-PORTRAIT,
watercolour, half-length, signed and dated 'O.G. Rejlander 1842', on card, 6 x 53/4 in (15.2 x 14.6 cm).

REFERENCE: A New History of Photography, edited by Michel Frizot, 1998.

Rejlander, teacher of Julia Margaret Cameron, was an advocate, as was she, of photography as a fine art. They believed 'it was the thought expressed, and not the particular medium, which made an object a work of art. Art was a means of making such thought visible.' It is believed that she learned her basic technique from him when he came to the Isle of Wight to photograph her neighbour, Tennyson, in 1863. Born in Sweden, he initially earned his living in Rome as a painter copying Old Masters and making lithographs. Having married an Englishwoman, he returned with her and in 1848 exhibited a painting at the Royal Academy. He was noted for his depiction of the urban unemployed and the temptations of the city.