Iris Germanica

Flowers, Still Life

Dimensions

Image Dimensions: 15.3 x 12.5 cm | 17.8 x 15.0 cm (faux frame) Aug. 24, 1894: Vol. XXV, No. 675
Support Dimensions: 28.8 x 21.5 cm

Robert Frost was a professional photographer from the town of Loughborough in Leicestershire, England.

Iris Germanica, displayed along with other frames by Frost during the joint photographic exhibition in New York and hosted by the Society of Amateur Photographers of New York was reviewed in The Photographic Times for the issue of May 11, 1894:


 Some studies of flowers and fruit on the left of the door leading into the smaller galleries were particularly affected by the unfortunate framing; they were the work of Mr. Robert Frost, of Loughborough, Eng., and so far as regards the flowers they were far and away the best in the exhibition. No. 22, “Iris Germanica,” was especially well rendered. Two studies of Frost landscapes in the same series were also very good.  (1.)

Editorial comment for the photograph appeared in the Times the following week after being published as the frontis for Aug. 24:

We have received several letters from some of our subscribers, admiring the flower study, Iris Germanica, by Robert Frost, which we presented to our readers last week as a frontispiece. The picture attracted much attention at the recent joint exhibition held in New York, and has already received many medals. Mr. Frost is a remarkably clever worker, and we hope before long to be able to give our readers some other specimens of his artistic productions. The reproduction was by the Photo-chrome Engraving Co., and speaks well of their new process of half-tone.  (Aug. 31, 1894: p. 139)

Hector Maclean, in his article What Shall I Photograph? subtitled Flowerland in the July 3, 1896 issue of England’s Photographic News, praises Frost’s floral photography. An excerpt:

An axiom upon which the highest importance should as a rule be attached, is that the photograph of a flower should always render the blossom in the resulting print of the exact size of nature. This is the custom of our most successful professional flower-photographer, Mr. Robert Frost, of Loughborough, and it is no doubt due to this point being observed by him that he has so surely attained to the first rank. Usually, because to do so is very much easier, amateurs render flowers a good deal smaller than life-size; the effect is that of looking at pining and dwindled specimens. Occasionally we are treated to the reverse fault, as when Brobdingnagian images are projected on to the lantern screen; in these roses will often measure some twenty feet in circumference, the whole being woefully marred by an odious coarseness and an immoderate magnification. Such things are not pictures, but photo-micrographs.  (p. 419)

1. excerpt: The New York Exhibition: Third Notice: p. 293