Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of Art
AT-00013014The Pyramids of Saqqara, from the Northeast
About the Artwork
Frith was the first photographer in Egypt to successfully use the wet collodion process, introduced in 1851. Its glass plate negatives yielded sharper, more detailed images than paper ones. He even created mammoth plate prints, as this size is called, which required equally large glass plate negatives. Pursuing the process’s exacting chemistry in Egypt’s scorching sunlight was trying. Frith sometimes sought refuge in tombs for the cool air and darkness to process his plates. “Pushing myself backwards upon my hands and knees, into a damp slimy rock-tomb . . . I prepared my pictures by candlelight in one of the interior chambers. . . . The floor was covered . . . with an impalpable ill flavored dust, which rose in clouds as we moved; from the roof were suspended groups of fetid bats.”
Inscriptions
Written in negative: "Frith 1858"; in pencil on verso: "137 / 206"; "7126.7"; "CED7051 [? this has been erased]"
Provenance
Charles Isaacs, New York, NY March 4, 1996: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
Pyramids & Sphinxes: Views of Egypt. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 6-May 24, 2016).
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Francis Frith (British, 1822–1898)
- Date
- 1858
- Medium
- albumen print from wet collodion negative
- Dimensions
- Image: 38.2 x 47.7 cm (15 1/16 x 18 3/4 in.); Matted: 61 x 76.2 cm (24 x 30 in.)
- Type
- Photograph
- Classification
- Photograph
- Department
- Photography
- Credit line
- Gift of Charles Isaacs in honor of Louis and Martha Isaacs
- Accession no.
- 1996.19
More by Francis Frith in museum collections
Open-access museum record · AT-00013014
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