Collected Item: “Damaged & Destroyed : Three Stories of Preservation and Loss from the PMC’s Photographic Archive”
Contributing Organisation
Contribution Title
Damaged & Destroyed : Three Stories of Preservation and Loss from the PMC’s Photographic Archive
Description (This can only be plain text, i.e. no links or bullet points.)
In 2021, the Paul Mellon Centre (PMC) published its photographic archive online. The archive comprises more than 100,000 reproductions of paintings, prints, photographs, and sculptures. The photographs, which were taken over a forty-year period between the early 1960s to the late 1990s, offer images of objects from across six centuries, and focus in particular on sixteenth- to nineteenth-century British art.
This feature focuses on a selection of the damaged and destroyed works that are recorded in the Centre’s photographic archive, and uses them to suggest some of the values and limitations of such archives. It takes the form of three stories. The first offers a glimpse into the work and tragic life of the largely forgotten eighteenth-century artist Hugh Robinson; the second looks at four portraits of women associated with a titled Scottish family, the Rothes, which were totally destroyed during a high-profile warehouse fire in 1997; and the third looks at a damaged sketchbook by the nomadic Georgian artist George Chinnery.
This feature focuses on a selection of the damaged and destroyed works that are recorded in the Centre’s photographic archive, and uses them to suggest some of the values and limitations of such archives. It takes the form of three stories. The first offers a glimpse into the work and tragic life of the largely forgotten eighteenth-century artist Hugh Robinson; the second looks at four portraits of women associated with a titled Scottish family, the Rothes, which were totally destroyed during a high-profile warehouse fire in 1997; and the third looks at a damaged sketchbook by the nomadic Georgian artist George Chinnery.
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Hugh Robinson, Boy with a Kite, circa before 1787.
Digital image courtesy of Paul Mellon Centre Photographic Archive, PA-F05476-0005
Digital image courtesy of Paul Mellon Centre Photographic Archive, PA-F05476-0005
Content Type
Online Exhibition
Subject (1)
Collection Introduction
Subject (2)
Art and Architectural History
Subject (3)
Cultural History
Geographical Area (1)
Britain and Ireland
Geographical Area (2)
World
Time Period
16th-17th Century
Time Period (2)
18th-19th Century
If there are any additional Subjects/Geographical Areas/Periods relevant from the lists above please list them here
20th century
Contribution URL
https://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/archives-and-library/damaged-and-destroyed