Photograph by Bedford Lemere, Westminster, Victoria Tower. Gateway at base, albumen print, ca. 1875

Albumen print

Purchased from Bedford Lemere 10 June 1875

This photograph is part of a collection of photographs recently discovered in the Sculpture Section among archival material that relates to the V&A's celebrated Cast Courts. The photographs document objects in the Cast Courts, including originals from which the casts were made. The staff member who assembled this collection of photographs organised them chronologically in terms of the year that the V&A acquired the casts. Each photograph had also been indexed to the corresponding object in the V&A cast collection.

From the very beginning, the V&A commissioned and collected photographs as a way of extending the visual resources of the Museum to artists and students of art and design. Architectural and topographical photographs, as well as photographs of art objects such as these, would have been collected by the National Art Library to be used as reference material. By the late 1970s, in conjunction with the formation of the Photograph Collection as a curatorial section with the remit of collecting ‘photography as a work of art’, many of the photographs with particular relevance to other departments within the V&A were transferred in bulk to the corresponding curatorial offices. The organisation by cast date and indexing to the V&A’s casts confirms their status as reference objects.

The discovery and cataloguing of these photographs is part of the ongoing programme to reunite photographs scattered among the various departments of the Museum with the rest of the Photography Collection. They come from the same initial sources as the Photographs Collection, and are worthy of reconsideration, both as museum objects and as an important contextual reference source for not only the Cast Courts but the collections of the Museum as a whole.

The galleried display areas of the Royal Architectural Museum located in Tufton Street were covered with casts of sculptural details taken from Gothic buildings, including the cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris and Westminster Abbey. By the 1970s, Bedford Lemere & Co. was granted permission to photograph the RAM collection, winning an award for the series at the 1873 International Exhibition at Vienna.

The photographs are mostly of casts; many of them are identified (Chartres, Rouen, Amiens, St. Albans, Wells, Hereford, Ely, Lincoln, etc). The casts include capitals, bosses, finials, brackets, rosettes, spandrels, etc. Many of the photographs are enhanced by signs wired onto the wall stating the source of the cast and name of the photographer. Bedford Lemere & Co. catalogue numbers scratched into the negatives are also occasionally visible. They were sold as sets (either mounted or unmounted), or singly, and marketed to architects, students and 'art-workmen'.

The V&A took a leading role in the reproduction of art works to serve as models for artists and designers. When the South Kensington Musem (as the V&A was first known) was established in 1852, casts and photography were regarded as an essential part of the collection. They were viewed as educational tools, extending the visual resources of the Museum to artists and students of art and design.

The South Kensington Museum purchased from Lemere two duplicate sets of 30 unmounted photographs on 18 January 1873. The selection appears to made to order rather than a pre-selected set seen in volumes in other collections. A later purchase was made 10 June 1875 of two duplicate sets of 60 unmounted photographs (again with a made to order selection).

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