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[Trees]

Thomas Keith British, Scottish
1854–57
Not on view
A surgeon and gynecologist by profession and a photographer by avocation, Keith applied his medical habits of orderly procedure and exactitude to the execution of his photographs: he prepared his paper negatives in advance, at night, and allowed himself to photograph only when the limpid early morning or late afternoon light guaranteed a successful result. His pictorial sensibility, however, was not bound by such prescripts; often, as in this picture, he appears to have reveled in the harsher, more disorderly elements of the Scottish countryside, in aspects of nature not immediately beautiful. Here, as he trod the scruffy woodland path and simple plank crossing a dry streambed, Keith saw aesthetic-and, one may surmise, human-value in the cant of a tree, its roots undermined by earlier torrents, as it leans into the embrace of its more substantial partner.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: [Trees]
  • Artist: Thomas Keith (British, Kincardine, Aberdeenshire, Scotland 1827–1895 London)
  • Date: 1854–57
  • Medium: Salted paper print from paper negative
  • Dimensions: Image: 30.3 x 22.1 cm (11 15/16 x 8 11/16 in.)
    Mount: 54.8 x 38.3 cm (21 9/16 x 15 1/16 in.)
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Gilman Collection, Purchase, Harriette and Noel Levine Gift, 2005
  • Object Number: 2005.100.5
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs

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