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Tate Britain Exhibition

Painting with Light Art and Photography from the Pre-Raphaelites to the modern age

11 May – 25 September 2016
Painting with Light website banner

Explore the painters that inspired early photographers and the photographs that changed painting

This exhibition celebrates the visual links between early photography and British art, bringing together fascinating vintage photographs and stunning paintings including Pre-Raphaelite, aesthetic and impressionist works.

Zaida Ben-Yusuf The Odor of Pomegranates 1899

Zaida Ben-Yusuf The Odor of Pomegranates 1899, published 1901 Photogravure on paper Tate

Black and white salted paper print of a woman holding a bowl of pomegranates next to a tree

Minna Keene Decorative Study c.1906 Carbon Print © Royal Photographic Society / National Media Museum / Science & Society Picture Library

Black and white photograph of Julia Margaret Cameron in a side profile

Julia Margaret Cameron Call, I Follow, I Follow, Let Me Die 1867 © Royal Photographic Society / National Media Museum / Science & Society Picture Library 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Beata Beatrix (c.1864–70)
Tate

Frederick Goodall, R.A. The Song of the Nubian Slave 1863

Frederick Goodall, R.A. The Song of the Nubian Slave 1863 Diploma Work, accepted 1863 71.20 x 92.0 x 2.30 cm Oil on canvas Photo credit: © Royal Academy of Arts, London; Photographer: John Hammond

Roger Fenton The Water Carrier 1858

Roger Fenton The Water Carrier 1858 Albumen Print, Wilson Center for Photography

Thomas Ogle The Bowder Stone in Our English Lakes, Mountains and Waterfalls

Thomas Ogle The Bowder Stone in ‘Our English Lakes, Mountains and Waterfalls as seen by William Wordsworth’ by A.W. Bennett, Published 1864 Tate

John Singer Sargent
Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (1885–6)
Tate

Vintage photograph of a young girl in a pale dress standing in front of an orange tree

​John Cimon Warburg, 1867–1931 , Peggy in the Garden, 1909, printed 2016, Photograph, transparency on lightbox from autochrome, Royal Photographic Society / National Media Museum / Science and Society Picture Library​

Black and white image of a painting of two people on a boat on a lake

Peter Henry Emerson and Thomas Goodall Setting the Bow Net 1885
Private Collection 

Colour painting of two people on a boat on a lake

Thomas Goodall The Bow-Net 1886
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool 

James Abbott McNeill Whistler
Nocturne: Blue and Gold - Old Battersea Bridge (c.1872–5)
Tate

woman in dark blue dress sits pensively whilst sewing with a face out of the darkness playing a stringed instrument to her right

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Mariana, 1870, Oil on canvas, Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museum Collection

Spanning 75 years across the Victorian and Edwardian ages, the exhibition showcases the experimental beginnings of photography right through to its flowering as an independent international art form. These are displayed alongside the paintings which they inspired and which inspired them.

This is the first time works by John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, JAM Whistler, John Singer Sargent and others will be shown alongside photographs by pivotal early photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron and Alvin Langdon Coburn.

Tate Britain

Millbank
London SW1P 4RG
Plan your visit

Dates

11 May – 25 September 2016

Supported by

Tate Patrons

Tate Patrons

****

a fabulously rich show

Evening Standard
****

fascinating

Time Out
*****

a wonderfully absorbing exhibition

The Mail on Sunday​
****
artsdesk

Find out more

  • Painting with Light: room guide

    Explore this exhibition room by room

  • People behind the pictures - Painting with Light

    We take a look at the stories behind the images in Painting with Light

  • Tate Kids: Who is John Everett Millais?

  • Tate Painting and the Art of Stereoscopic Photography

    Carol Jacobi

    Read the curatorial essay to BP Spotlight: ‘Poor man’s picture gallery’: Victorian Art and Stereoscopic Photography

  • The flowering of photography

    Hope Kingsley

    Discover two pioneering practitioners David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson

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