View of the Acropolis from the Musaeum Hill from The Acropolis of Athens (Plate 1). by (GREECE) Stillman, William James - 1870

"An uncommonly gifted, innovative photographer whose unquestioned masterpiece is The Acropolis of Athens."

Oval, 7½ x 9 ½ in. Carbon print on original mount. Some minor browning. Fine condition.

This photograph is the first view from W. J. Stillman's, The Acropolis of Athens, a series of 25 photographs taken in 1869 and published together the following year. The 25 photographs open with four longer views of the Acropolis, eventually spiraling in toward the Parthenon. Scholar Andrew Szegedy–Maszak notes that this well–known first photograph in the series "exemplifies [Stillman's] pictorial practice."

The Athenian Acropolis, one of the most famous landmarks of Ancient Greece, has been an important cultural and religious location since the 3rd millennium BCE. The most prominent building on the Acropolis, the Parthenon, was constructed between 447 and 438 BCE as a temple to Athena, although it eventually went on to serve as both a Christian church and a Muslim mosque. In this photograph, one can see a bell tower that was added by the Christian Franks in the 13th century. It was torn down only five years after Stillman's work was published.

An eccentric personality who excelled in many fields, including painting, art criticism, photography and journalism, Stillman held ties with preeminent art theorist, John Ruskin, and co–founded the first serious American art journal, The Crayon. When Stillman took up his most important photographic endeavor, The Acropolis of Athens, the aesthetic and philosophical positions he had formed in his earlier career as an artist greatly influenced the composition of his photographs. As a reviewer reported in The Atlantic about one of Stillman's earlier works, "the points of view are chosen with the fine feeling of an artist."