General Roberts and Staff
1879
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1879
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
General Roberts and Staff is a 1879 by John Burke, a Impressionism work, depicting Ireland, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This painting shows a group of British officers in crisp uniforms standing in a dusty Afghan camp. Tents, horses, and distant mountains fill the background. John Burke wasn’t actually a painter—he was a photographer. This image is based on one of his photos from the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Cameras back then couldn’t capture fast action, so Burke focused on portraits like this one instead. To see more of Burke’s war photos, look up John Burke (Irish, 1845–1915).
The subject of this album is the Second Anglo-Afghan War, which was fought from 1878 to 1880. John Burke was the first photographer to photograph extensively in Afghanistan and the main photographer covering that conflict. The technology of the day did not permit action shots of battles. As is usual for early conflict photography, the pictures are landscapes of the sites of momentous incidents, views of camps and civil and military infrastructure, and portraits of the soldiers and their leaders.
This album includes some of the earliest photographs of Afghanistan.
Read the full account in the museum source.
