Capital, San Pedro la Rua cloister, Estella, Spain. Arthur Kingsley Porter Collection.
The Fine Arts Library holds a collection of over 10,000 photographs of European medieval monuments taken by Professor Arthur Kingsley Porter (1883-1933) in the 1920s. The Porter collection includes negatives as well as prints and served as the basis for several of his noted publications such as Romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads (1923).
Kathryn Brush, Professor at the University of Western Ontario, has studied Porter’s work in depth and recently focused on the role played by Lucy Wallace Porter (1876-1962) in her husband’s photographic campaigns. There is reason to believe that Mrs. Porter took many of the images and even that she may have been the more accomplished photographer. It is of course difficult to attribute responsibility in the absence of detailed shooting records. It was rewarding therefore to locate this image of Mrs. Porter behind the camera as evidence of her efforts.