Roger Fenton research papers and photographs, 1833-1976

Extent:

1.5 Linear Feet (2 boxes; 1 oversize folder)

Scope and content:

The series includes research materials assembled by art historian Marcia M. Mathews on early English photographer Roger Fenton. The earliest date reflects a transcript of a letter from 1833 from Roger to his mother while he was at school.

Mathews does not appear to have published any work based on this research, and there are no drafts in the collection, although she seems to have been involved at some level in Helmut Gernsheim's book on Fenton, published in London in 1954. The dozens of letters to Mathews from Fenton family members (1940s-1957) mention this connection and may shed more light on it.

Other correspondence is from curators at various institutions where Fenton's photographs and papers were located, and from the photography lab where professional copies were made of his original photographs taken in the 1850s.

Included in the series are six 2 1/2 x 4" cartes-de-visite photographs of Roger Fenton and his family (wife and daughters), early 1860s. Other photographs are copies (circa 1940s) and include images of the Fenton home, Crimble Hall (Rochdale Borough, Lancashire, England), and of other family members. There appears to be an original unmounted albumen print of a full standing portrait, probably by Fenton, of his father-in-law (last name Maynard), as well as several copies of photographs by Roger Fenton (1850s). One modern copy photograph is of a sketch of Crimble Hall by Marcia Mathews.

Other items include a copy of a questionnaire about the Fenton family, created by Mathews in the 1940s and sent to various Fenton relatives; it is accompanied by one respondent's handwritten answers.

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