FREDERICK H. EVANS Twin-Elliptic Pendulum Curves made on a Goold's Instrument 1899-1900 Drawing blue ink 2.75x2.25" FHE/1116 Mounted on a brown heavy paper 6.7x4.7" with From the Library of Frederick H. Evans library bookplate.

A bit of photographic history on the verso of the mount in brown ink "Dear Tom- Merry Christmas & a happy New Year Sam Wagstaff." On the back of the bookmark mount in brown ink is printed Twin-Elliptic Pendulum Curves made on a Gould's Instrument by Frederick H. Evans 1899-1900. Sam Wagstaff was one of the great photography collectors of the 1970s and his collection was a key part of the original J. Paul Getty purchase when they started their photography collection in the 1980s. Wagstaff was also mentor, friend and lover of Robert Mapplethorpe.

Merging the scientific and aesthetic, the use of JosephÂ’s Goolds twin elliptical harmonograph to create pendulum drawings provided further evidence of EvanÂ’s interest in mathematics-based patterns: the seemingly infinite spirals of the drawings recall "...the succession of cloisters or ribbed vaulting in a cathedral..." P. 11

Provenance: Robert Hershkowitz, Early English Photographer Dealer, Linfield, Sussex, England 1999

Frederick H. Evans 1853-1943, the foremost British photographer in the 1890-1910 period, was a bookseller and collector, known and respected by many of the famous artists, writers and critics living in England in the late nineteenth century. Through his early landscape and nature photography he attempted to show that the physical realm corresponded to the spiritual.

In 1887 he received the Photographic Society's Medal of Honour for these artistic studies.). At age forty-five, Evans sold his bookshop and took up photography full time to pursue his "life-long study of the beautiful." After P. H. Emerson, Evans was the earliest great platinum print artistic photographer.

Evan's greatest contribution to the history of photography was his interpretation of the majestic medieval cathedrals of England. His intention was to make viewers feel as if they were actually inside the cathedrals when they looked at his photographs. To achieve this he sometimes spent as much as two weeks living in a cathedral studying the way light and shadow defined forms and created a spiritual atmosphere. In 1900, Evans had a large one-man exhibition of his platinum photographs at the Royal Photographic Society. That same year he was elected to join the Brotherhood of the Linked Ring, a group of photographers who had seceded from the London Photographic Society. In 1903 he contributed a portfolio of cathedral photographs and an article to the fourth issue of Camera Work. He was the first English photographer invited by Stieglitz to contribute to the publication.

Excellent all affixed to a modern rag mount with linen tape and over mat