Medieval Architecture in Photography
Title/Subject: Trinity Abbey, Vendôme, France
Creator: Arthur Ewing Princehorn (American, 1904-2001)
Date: late 1920s or early 1930s
Type: photograph
Medium: gelatin silver print on board
Dimensions: 20" h x 15 3/4" w (image)
Collection: Clarence Ward Collection (RG 30/158)
The College Archives frequently receives visual materials with personal papers or institutional records that at first glance do not seem to be related to Oberlin's history. In the case of Clarence Ward (1884-1973), Oberlin's first director of the Allen Memorial Art Museum and professor of art history, his extensive collection of photographs relate to his scholarly work and teaching on French Medieval and American architecture. Ward was also a practicing architect who designed a number of buildings in the Oberlin community.On two trips in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Ward traveled to France with Oberlin College photographer Arthur Ewing Princehorn (1904-2001) to study and document Romanesque and Gothic church architecture, primarily for a book that did not see publication. His manuscript is in his collection in the College Archives. Since Ward conducted his French campaigns during the early part of the 20th century, the resulting photographs provide vital documentation of many structures that were subsequently damaged during World War II.
This oversize print of the portal (entry) of Trinity Abbey in Vendôme (1306-1357 and 1459--16th century; facade, early 16th century, by Jean Texier) reveals Princehorn's expertise and Ward's direction in achieving exceptional visual documentation of the sculpture surrounding the church's portal. It is mounted on a 28" x 22" board, and used for many years in the classroom, when access to images projected in the lecture hall was limited to reproductions and photographic prints. The deep blacks and crisp details in the photograph are little diminished after decades of use. Ward gifted Princehorn's extensive negatives of French churches to the National Gallery of Art near the end of his life in 1971. The Clarence Ward Archive at the National Gallery has been digitized in collaboration with Artstor.
The College Archives holds a selection of Princehorn's oversize prints mounted on board like this one, transferred from the Art Department's Visual Resources Collection (now in the Oberlin College Libraries). During lectures Ward and other professors projected glass lantern slides, many made from Princehorn's negatives. Ward was an innovator in changing the projection process from one involving an operator changing slides by hand, to the development of projectors that could be loaded with slides in carousel fashion and operated remotely by the professor from the front of the lecture hall. Four projectors were made at his specifications--the first projectors, it is told, to enable professors to load slides ahead of time and advance as they lectured.
For many years these projectors were essential to teaching art history at Oberlin. When 35mm slides came into use with the carousel projector, Oberlin professors still occasionally used Ward's projectors for lantern slides for which there were no modern equivalent images of artworks and architecture. As digital visual resources replaced most of the images on 35mm and lantern slides, the Visual Resources Curator transferred one of Ward's projectors to the Archives in 2014. Another like it is still in place in a projection booth of the Art Department lecture hall.
Sources
Clarence Ward Collection (RG 30/158), Oberlin College Archives.
Entry for the Trinity Abbey, Vendôme, from the National Gallery of Art (Artstor).
Bulletin of the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Vol. IV, No. 2, October 1947.
Related Collections
Clarence Ward Archive, National Gallery of Art
Clarence Ward Collection (RG 30/158), Oberlin College Archives
Arthur Ludwig and Arthur Ewing Princehorn Collection (RG 30/416), Oberlin College Archives
Visual Resources Collection, Oberlin College Library