Image of Gallery in South Kensington
On display at V&A South Kensington
Photography Centre, Room 100, The Bern and Ronny Schwartz Gallery

The Great Eastern under Construction

Photograph
18 November 1857 (made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

Photograph


Object details

Categories
Object type
TitleThe <i>Great Eastern</i> under Construction (assigned by artist)
Materials and techniques
Albumen print from wet collodion negative
Brief description
Albumen print. Howlett, Robert. The 'Great Eastern' Under Construction 1857; Howlett, Robert. The 'Great Eastern' Under Construction 1857
Physical description
Photograph
Dimensions
  • Image height: 285mm
  • Image width: 359mm
  • Sheet height: 353mm
  • Sheet width: 428mm
Royal landscape mount
Style
Gallery label
Howlett documented the construction of the Great Eastern over four years. Weighing more than 22 thousand tonnes, on completion the ship was the largest man-made object ever built. In this study, workers are dwarfed by the steamship’s hull, emphasising its massive size. Ultimately, the ship’s magnitude proved its downfall. Too large to dock at most ports and unable to fit through the strategically important Suez Canal, it was scrapped in 1888.(May 2023)
Credit line
Purchased, 1979.
Subjects depicted
Bibliographic reference
Val Williams and Susan Bright, How we are: photographing Britain, from the 1840s to the present London: Tate Publishing, 2007. ISBN: 9781854377142.
Collection
Accession number
PH.258-1979

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Record createdJanuary 8, 2003
Record URL
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