Charles Clifford

From Ballooning and Portrait Studio Work to Architectural Photography

Much remains uncertain about Clifford’s photographic education before he settled in Spain. When he appeared in Madrid in 1850, newspapers first described him in connection with ballooning, and he opened a photographic studio called El Daguerrotipo Inglés around the same time.^*23 Researcher Rachel Bullough traces how Clifford continued portrait work until the summer of 1852, then gave up the studio for financial reasons, bought photographic materials and learned new techniques in Britain, and returned to Spain in 1853 to begin photographic tours around the country.^*23 Architectural photography was therefore not a fixed subject from the outset. A turning point in portrait business, new negative processes, and a market for views of different regions came together as the center of his work. In 1854 he exhibited twelve views from Spain at the Photographic Society in London, establishing an early route by which his architectural photographs reached British audiences as well as domestic patrons.^*23 The Met gives his birth year as 1819.^*1 The Museo del Prado gives about 1820; because major institutions disagree, this page uses c.1820–1863.^*16

Royal Patronage under Isabella II and Architectural Photography

Clifford developed ties to the court of Isabella II, gaining access to royal travel, cities, palaces, and religious architecture. The Met explains that royal patronage gave him unusually broad access to important buildings across Spain.^*2 His photographs of the royal progress in 1860 record not just buildings but urban spaces decorated for the Queen’s arrival. In Getty’s view of the Barcelona provincial government building, a portrait of Isabella II hangs from a balcony, bringing political festivity into the architectural photograph itself.^*9 Such images preserved the condition of architecture while also documenting where the Queen traveled and how cities received her.

Recording Historic Architecture Before Restoration

Clifford’s architectural photographs include damage, surrounding streets, and the state of buildings before restoration instead of presenting idealized antiquarian views. In Cloisters of Saint John of the Kings, a monastery damaged after the Napoleonic Wars is rendered through a long tonal scale that makes the surfaces of the stone legible.^*2 At the ruined monastery of Yuste, historical monumentality and weathered present condition occupy the same frame.^*4 In Burgos, however, a statue of Saint Bruno is said to have been moved from its original location to a brighter entrance for the photograph, demonstrating that staging could enter even a documentary architectural image.^*8

The Museo del Prado explains that Clifford’s 1857 photograph of the museum’s west façade uses a large format to make close sections and architectural details central to the image, creating a record from which the former placement of sculptures that were later moved can still be identified.^*27 Diagonal perspective and the choice of light shaped the composition while preserving parts of the building at a resolution useful to later study.

Why Use Large-Format Photography for Public Works?

The commissioned nature of much of Clifford’s work is crucial to understanding his public-works photography. A doctoral dissertation at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid argues that the nature of a commission could influence the choice of subject, the character of the photographs, and their placement within an album.^*24 For the Canal de Isabel II, which supplied Madrid with water, Clifford used large photographs to record completed structures and related monuments so that the new urban infrastructure could be visually inspected. The Prado’s Alegoría del río Lozoya en la fuente del río, Canal de Isabel II shows the waterworks themselves becoming a monumental photographic subject.^*18 On royal progresses he repeatedly photographed streets, temporary architecture, and festive decorations, while the two-volume Photographic Souvenir of Spain in the Royal Collection contains 159 photographs.^*19 In View of town, Toledo, a high vantage point gathers the dense city and its terrain into a single view, allowing the spatial relation of the entire destination to be understood later.^*15 Combining close architectural views and distant urban panoramas in one album made it possible to follow where the court traveled and what each city presented as a subject worth recording.

Canal de Isabel II: Compositions Planned with Engineer Lucio del Valle

In the Canal de Isabel II photographs, chief engineer Lucio del Valle indicated which areas of construction needed to be documented and the direction from which they should be seen, while Clifford worked from those requirements to choose camera position and composition. Fundación Canal’s history records that del Valle and Clifford toured the works together and considered photographic viewpoints on site.^*26 The commissioners needed technically legible views of bridges, aqueducts, and construction activity, and Clifford selected positions and placements of workers that made those elements readable within a single image. Fundación Canal presents the series as a record of a major engineering project that secured Madrid’s water supply and transformed the city.^*25 The compositions of these public-works photographs therefore reflect both the information engineers wanted recorded and the photographer’s decisions about how to show it.

From Paper Negatives to Large Glass Negatives

Clifford’s Salamanca photographs of about 1853 are albumen prints from paper negatives, but by the later 1850s he had moved to wet-collodion on large glass negatives, increasing the clarity of contours and detail.^*1 In Hospital of La Latina, broad wall surfaces, windows, and ornament are recorded at a resolution that brings the image closer to a reconstructive architectural document.^*7 Getty’s photograph of a model of the Alhambra shows photography being used to reproduce and circulate architectural knowledge through models as well as through images of actual buildings.^*11

Salamanca, 1853

The 1853 photographs of Salamanca belong to a period when Clifford was consolidating his method as an architectural photographer. He enlarged sculpted portals in near-frontal views and selected light that made their details legible, allowing photographs to function as material for architectural study as much as views of a whole building.^*1 The Musée d’Orsay’s Alhambra photograph shows that by the mid-1850s he was using large glass collodion negatives capable of rendering detail with greater hardness and clarity than the earlier paper-negative works.^*20 The National Gallery of Art holds photographs of architecture in Toledo and Segovia, confirming the repeated application of this method across regions.^*3

Albums of the Royal Progress

The 1860 Photographic Memories of the Trip of Their Majesties and Highnesses to the Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Aragon follows a traveling court through architectural photographs organized by city. The Met’s Guadalajara photograph records that this album contained fifty-six images.^*6 Getty’s view on Palma includes not only the royal palace and cathedral but houses and timber in the foreground, bringing monumental architecture and the everyday city into the same frame.^*13 Arranged sequentially by destination, the album became a record of the royal progress, preserving both how different cities received the Queen and which major buildings represented them.^*14

Recording Historic Architecture, Regional Dress, and Public Works

Clifford photographed Gothic cathedrals, Islamic architecture, monasteries, regional dress, and public construction. In Tipos Locales, figures in local clothing are individually posed and ordered, extending the visual classification of “regional characteristics” beyond architecture.^*5 Getty’s photograph of a domestic building in Palma likewise treats a representative local structure as a type.^*12 This selection reflects the typological habits of nineteenth-century travel culture, while the photographs have also acquired documentary value for buildings that no longer survive and cities seen before later alterations.

Royal Progresses, Public Works, and the Image of the State

Royal commissions expanded Clifford’s access, but they also gave his photographs a role in recording the cities and public works associated with the monarchy in affirmative terms. Images of buildings in Barcelona decorated with portraits of the Queen and the albums of royal journeys do not separate an “objective” architectural record from political festivity.^*9 A photograph of Zaragoza’s Torre Nueva records the tower’s lean in its caption as well as its appearance, making the image useful for referring to the building’s physical condition.^*10 The Museo del Prado’s collection and publication of Clifford’s work also shows that his photographs are treated within Spain as evidence for art and architectural history, not merely as views made by a foreign traveler.^*16

Jane Clifford’s Independent Photographic Work

Jane Clifford worked alongside her husband in the photographic business and continued making and selling photographs after his death. The Museo del Prado maintains an independent artist record for her as a photographer.^*17 According to the museum, around 1863 she independently photographed the Tesoro del Delfín for the South Kensington Museum, retained the negatives, and sold prints to several museums.^*28 Any account of the Clifford studio’s continuation therefore needs to include Jane’s inheritance of its techniques and sales network and her ability to carry out commissions in her own right.

Spanish Architectural Photography, Royal Commissions, and Clifford’s Place in Photographic History

Clifford’s place in photographic history is broader than the high-resolution recording of Spanish architecture. Through royal patronage and commissions, he repeatedly photographed historic buildings before restoration, royal progresses, and public works such as water infrastructure, leaving them as research material, commemorative albums, and project records. The Canadian Centre for Architecture treats its Clifford holdings as important material in the history of nineteenth-century architectural photography because the images preserve buildings at a resolution that supports later comparison and accumulate architectural information across regions.^*21 The presence of his works in collections such as the Musée d’Orsay also shows that these architectural images circulated beyond their royal and Spanish patrons and became resources through which Spanish architecture could be consulted abroad.^*22