Photograph by Isabel Agnes Cowper, 'Still Life with inkstand, quill pens, bottle, glass, foolscap paper and books for Advanced Art Examination', albumen print, 1880

Small sepia photograph showing a still life on a table, including museum catalogues, a carafe and tumbler, quill pens and brochures.

Another copy of this photograph was recently discovered bound with the Council on Education Art Examinations papers from 1880. These examinations were part of the national course of art and design advanced by the V&A's first Director, Henry Cole, and the Science and Art Department. The photograph is included with the examination papers relating to the 'Painting from Still Life' exercise.

As part of their certification, art students were required to execute a still-life painting in either oil or watercolour. Included with the examination was a copy of this photograph with instructions to obtain the pictured objects in advance of the examination and to recreate a still-life arranged 'as nearly as possible as shown in the photograph'. Once done, students were required to paint, over a set period of five hours, on the designated day, a still-life on supplied canvases (or watercolour paper affixed to the canvas), without the aid of the photograph. The canvasses were to be returned to the Department for evaluation at the conclusion of the examination.

According to the official Report on the National Competition of the Works of Schools of Art, 1880, the competition 'showed a general extension of sound methods of painting. No single work was characterised by such completeness or sense of perfection as to give entire satisfaction; and the award of four Silver medals, but no gold Medal, marked the Examiners' opinion of the degree of success attained. The paintings had generally lost freshness through being overworked, from want of a sufficiently direct method of execution.'

The photograph was made by Isabel Agnes Cowper, the Museum's first female Official Museum Photographer, who took up the post in 1868 upon the death of her brother, Charles Thurston Thompson, the Museum's first Official Museum Photographer. Up until the discovery of the duplicate attached to the examination papers, the staged photograph was always an anomaly among her identified works, which document museum objects and works on loan, as well as the construction of museum buildings. This is the first example of a photograph by Cowper made specifically to be used as part of the art examinations and is possibly the first example of photography being used for the South Kensington art examinations.

Photographed in the glass-house (photographic studio) at the South Kensington Museum for use for the Local Advanced Art Examination, 1880, Science and Art Department of the Committee of Council on Education, South Kensington

Additional print bound with the Third Grade Art Examination Papers in the National Art Library.

This photograph was received in 1880 ‘from Stores (Mrs Cowper)’. Isabel Agnes Cowper was the Museum’s first Official Museum Photographer. This still life was made to accompany National Art Examinations in painting for the year 1880. It is also interesting in the ways in which it represent her role as Official Photographer, which likely involved record keeping in quill pen and ink, the production of catalogues and the perusal of suppliers’ brochures. The composition is enlivened by a tumbler and carafe, in which the Museum’s daylight studio is reflected. The books include the Catalogue of the British Section, Paris International Exhibition 1867, the Catalogue to the Duke of Edinburgh’s Collection (1872) and the Museum’s Catalogue of Reproductions of Works of Art: Electrotypes, Plaster Casts, Fictile Ivories, Chromolithos, Etchings, Photographs (1869), these would have been used by curators, as well as artists and scholars, as reference resources for their work.

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