Henry Peach Robinson and Victorian theory

Abstract

Any history that treats 19th-century photography mentions the work of H. P. Robinson (1830–1901). He is acknowledged to be a foremost practitioner of picture making by rule and combination. His Fading Away (1858) in which a young girl is seen on her deathbed, is as well known as Reijlander's Two Ways of Life (1857) and, at the time, excited much controversy for its ‘morbid sentiment’.