NEW YORK — Hans P. Kraus Jr. Fine Photographs is pleased to present British Landscapes: Early Photographs from 30 January through 30 April 2026. Featured work is primarily from the 19th century, by William Henry Fox Talbot, Sir John Herschel, Roger Fenton, Captain Horatio Ross, Payne Jennings, and others. The exhibition opens in conjunction with Master Drawings New York.
Among the highlights is the salt print from a calotype negative made in the early 1840s of a leafless majestic oak on the grounds of William Henry Fox Talbot’s home at Lacock Abbey, captured by Talbot soon after his invention of photography. In this landscape masterpiece, Talbot (1800-1877) emphasizes the oak’s size and structure in silhouette against the clear light of winter, offering a rich contrast to other trees along the horizon. It also signals just how far Talbot had advanced since his time in Italy, in 1833, when he struggled to achieve results with the camera lucida, the optical device patented as a drawing aid at the beginning of the 19th century.
The camera lucida was used to great purpose by his close friend and fellow scientist Sir John Herschel (1792-1872). He would use it throughout his life to record cities and landscapes in England and on the Continent. A skilled draftsman, Herschel’s artistic talents enabled him to create beautiful and precise camera lucida pencil drawings. Included in the exhibition is a delicate 1829 example, showing Worcester Cathedral in its landscape, reminding us of the direct relationship between drawing and photography.
Among the works by Roger Fenton (1819-1869) in the exhibition is the cloud study, “Afternoon,” a breathtaking salt print from a collodion negative made in 1856. Inspired by Constable's cloud studies and Turner's painterly evocations of atmosphere and light, Fenton's rendition of clouds and sky is an intensely felt meditation on nature hovering between the visible and the imagined while manifesting a reverence for the observable world. The preeminent British photographer of the 1850s, Fenton mastered all its genres and advocated the medium's place among the fine arts. This print, exhibited at the Photographic Society, London in 1857, is on par with the two celebrated Fenton cloud studies from the Rubel Collection, now at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The landscape and architectural views of Horatio Ross (1901-1886), a Highland aristocrat and legendary marksman whose enthusiasm for photography was second only to his passion for nature, form a unique picture of life in mid-19th century Scotland. Ross was a founding member of the Photographic Society of Scotland in 1856 and one of its most vital supporters. On display are two of his bold albumen prints, one with its paper negative, of dramatic Scottish coastal views, circa 1858, that attest to Ross’ technical skill and artistic originality.
The photographs of John Payne Jennings (1843-1926) are extremely rare compared with those from other successful British studios of the 1870s. Jennings’s picturesque views were often included in special edition publications of British poets and novelists. On display are three albumen prints made in the 1870s from his English Lake District portfolio depicting the dramatic landscapes that inspired the Romantic poet William Wordsworth and that were adored by John Ruskin, who owned a home nearby on the shore of Coniston Water.
British Landscapes: Early Photographs is on view at the gallery from 30 January through 30 April 2026.