485
between the dismay of those who had followed his teach-
ing and the delight of those whom he had antagonised.
Emerson recalled unsold copies of the second edition
of Naturalistic Photography and wrote to his friend, the
sculptor James Havard Thomas that he was considering
giving up photography entirely. “I wish to God I had
never seen a camera...”
But Emerson was resilient and his correspondence in
the spring of 1891 with Joseph Pennell, the American
artist and illustrator, shows him arguing vigorously
that photographic images, printed as photogravures,
could legitimately be considered as art. Pennell politely
disagreed.
Emerson did not give up photography and continued
to publish his work. In 1893 he published On English
Lagoons, and in 1895 Marsh Leaves. He made the
photogravure plates himself for these, his last two il-
lustrated books. As opposed to his earlier large-format
photographs, frequently showing rural scenes and ag-
ricultural workers, his post-renunciation photographs
are smaller, contain progressively fewer human fi gures,
tend to concentrate on distant subjects and, frequently,
the effects of the mists and frosts of autumn and winter
on the landscapes of rural Norfolk.
Emerson’s last attempt to infl uence his contempo-
raries was his publication, in 1899, of the third edition of
Naturalistic Photography, from which all references to
the artistic status of photography were excised. Despite
his earlier public renunciation of photography-as-art, he
retained his conviction that photographs should share
the materials and methods of the artist-printmaker. He
wrote:... we feel that the day is not far distant when every one
who expresses himself by photography will also bite his
own plates and make his own blocks, and the prints will
be published by print-dealers as etchings are now. This,
in my opinion, is the only method which can give fullest
satisfaction.
It is clear from Emerson’s correspondence with
Alfred Stieglitz that he continued to take photographs
into the 1920s, but no evidence of this output seems to
have survived. Apart from the published work, many
examples of which still survive, thanks to their pub-
lication in bound volumes, there exists a number of
unpublished photographs by Emerson that were donated
to George Eastman House, where they remain as the
only signifi cant collection of his unpublished work in
a public collection.
P.H. Emerson died in 1936, one day short of his
eightieth birthday.
David StoneBiography
Peter Henry Emerson was born in Cuba on 3 May 1856,
to an American father and an English mother. Following
the death of his father in1867, his mother moved the fam-
ily to England, where he completed his education, quali-
fying in medicine in 1885, having married in 1881. There
were fi ve children, born between 1882 and 1892.
His photographic subjects were concentrated mainly
in the English county of Norfolk and published in a se-
ries of books and folios combining text and photographs,
some co-authored with the painter T.F. Goodall.EMERSON, PETER HENRY
Emerson, Peter Henry. Rowing Home
the Shoof-Stuff.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Gilman Collection, Purchase, Mrs.
Walter Annenberg and the Annenberg
Foundation Gift, 2005 (2005.100.726)
Image © The Metropolitan Museum
of Art.Hannavy_RT72353_C005.indd 485 7/5/2007 11:18:18 AM