Lord Burghersh, Earl of Westmorland
1855
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1855
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Lord Burghersh, Earl of Westmorland is a 1855 by Roger Fenton, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This painting shows a man in a dark military uniform with gold trim, standing stiffly against a plain background. His face is serious, eyes fixed straight ahead. Fenton was best known for his photographs, not paintings. This portrait was made the same year he traveled to the Crimean War to take pictures—some of the first war photos ever. The man in the painting, Lord Burghersh, was a British diplomat working on the war’s politics. To see more of Fenton’s work, look up Roger Fenton (British, 1819–1869).
In 1855 Fenton traveled to the Crimea, a peninsula on the Black Sea in Eastern Europe, as part of a commercial venture to produce and publish photographs of the Crimean War. In this conflict, French, British, and Turkish troops were fighting against the Russian military. Lord Burghersh (1784–1859), a British soldier and diplomat, traveled to the Crimea in his role as ambassador to Austria; he was involved in negotiations with the Turkish government over the war.
Roger Fenton was one of the pioneers of war photography.
Read the full account in the museum source.
