Today’s image is an important and rare photograph which once graced the first-ever photographic exhibition in Dundee – which, itself, was one of the first in the world.
The image is by the pioneering photographer Peter Hinckes Bird (1827-1891). It shows the Obelisk and Great Hall at Karnak, in Egypt.
Taken around 1853-54, this salted paper print shows the Obelisk left centre with carved hieroglyphics, with columns and ruins behind.
The print measures 9 x 7 inches. It is neatly mounted on an album page and inscribed, ‘The Great Obelisk at Karnak.’ It is to be sold together with a half-length portrait of Peter Hinckes Bird from the mid-1850s.
The ‘Exhibition of Photographic Pictures’ in Dundee in 1854 was staged to raise funds for the town’s infirmary. It was one of the earliest of its type – the Photographic Society in London had been formed only a year earlier.
Most of the images shown in Dundee were provided by Britain’s foremost early photographers, including Bird, with the catalogue listing his photographs of Karnak. He also exhibited them at the British Association exhibition in Glasgow the following year.
A curiosity is that until the Dominic Winter image came to light it was thought that only one print from Bird’s body of work had survived, at the Society of Antiquaries, London.
However, if the auction house attribution is correct, then there are probably further unattributed photographs by Bird in the Dougan Collection at the University of Glasgow. Looking within that collection, Dominic Winter has verified that Dougan 105/9 and 105/10 are the same photograph as the one offered in its sale.
‘Great Hall Karnak’ appears in their Gloucester saleroom on December 16 guided at £1000-£1500.
Picture: Karnak, by Peter Hinckes Bird (Dominic Winter Auctions).
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