Painted photograph of an E. J. Poynter dado tile design for the Grill Room, South Kensington Museum: 1 of 11 land and seascape subjects. 1868-1885.

Blue and white painted photograph of a roundel design for tiles. A sylvan landscape is depicted with rocky river rapids running through it. In the immediate foreground lies the near riverbank, rock-strewn and scattered with trees which loom abruptly. It is shaded from the sunlight which appears to brightly illuminate the river itself and the steep, lofty bank covered with vegetation beyond. Three figures - two visibly armed with lances - ride on horseback behind a low brick or stone wall which crowns the far bank. Shadowy woodland lies behind. A blue border encloses the composition.

E. J. Poynter was invited to tender for the decoration of the Grill Room in November 1865. Many of Poynter's original dado tile designs for the Grill Room - including that which is reproduced in this painted photograph (Museum object number 1121:6) - are signed with his monogram 'EJP' and the date 1868. In this painted photograph, however, the monogram has been effaced, presumably to indicate that the object is a copy after Poynter rather than an original design by him. It is not clear when exactly J. Ireland Williamson's painted photographs of the Grill Room tile designs were made, but this particular example was received by the Museum in March 1885. Judging from the Seventeenth Report of the Science and Art Department, the actual dado tiles for the Grill Room were all installed by the end of 1869 at the latest.

This object is probably a salted paper print. According to Mark Haworth-Booth, nineteenth-century photographs made using salted paper were ideal for overpainting because of their matte surface; colour photography only became commercially available in the early twentieth century.

PH.174A-1885