In the Forest of Arden
In winter 2021 / 2022 I retraced the steps of Victorian chemist, lecturer and patent agent, George Shaw (1818-1904) in Packington Park, Warwickshire. Re-photographing the trees and landscape in Packington Park with the same early photographic process Shaw used there, the calotype.
The calotype is a positive/negative paper based photographic process, invented in 1841 using silver nitrate brushed onto fine paper and then developed in gallic acid. Her use of the calotype created an understanding of how the photographic materials respond to their handling in the landscape revealing the historical story of the place. This new body of work draws out links between their friendship, landscape and the materials and processes of early photography.
In the 1840s and 1850s, George Shaw and his colleague at Queen’s College, Birmingham metallurgist John Percy photographed the trees and landscape in Packington. I often found the same position they had taken in the landscape, offering a way in to understanding their relationship to this place. Today many of the trees in Packington have gone or changed beyond recognition across 170 years of environmental factors. However, some can still be identified as the trees that were sketched and photographed by this generation of artists.
Landscape painter Frederick Henry Henshaw was a friend of George Shaw and they often worked together in the parkland. Many other members of the Birmingham School of mid-nineteenth century landscape painters such as the Lines family, Thomas Baker of Leamington and John Adam Houston to name a few were actively working and painting in the Capability Brown designed landscape at Packington. Prior to this generation of painters at the turn of the nineteenth century the landscape was owned by renowned artist Heneage Finch, the earl of Aylesford who sketched the trees in Packington. The park follows a tradition set by Heneage Finch in preserving the dead trees for their artistic value.
Today, Shaw’s Calotype photographs of Packington are held in the collection at Musee D’Orsay, whilst John Percy’s remain in the collection of the Getty in LA. Paintings of Packington are dispersed widely amongst many collections, often catalogued as being ‘in the Forest of Arden.’
Jo Gane has produced prints from her calotype negatives using both traditional salt and silver light-sensitive printing techniques and the polymer photogravure process. Polymer gravure involves transferring the image onto a light sensitive relief plate that is washed out in water, then inked and put through a press with high quality Japanese Kozo paper. The colours are ground from pigment with linseed oil, chosen and mixed to preserve ephemeral colours of red, orange and purple that appear during the chemical stages of the calotype photographic process.
A talk about this work is available online here at the DMU recreative practices workshop (see presentations day 1, panel 2)
This work forms part of my AHRC funded PhD into early photography on Birmingham, thanks to support from Midlands 4 Cities doctoral training partnership.