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Description
Early photographs of castles and country houses, landscapes, and portraits in England, Gibraltar, and Ireland, taken between 1850 and 1856. Capel Cure also photographed civilians around the barracks, such as a knife grinder, barracks gate boy, chimney sweep, rag boy, and beggars, and included many views of nearby landmarks, such as Corville Abbey, Rosecrea (1853), the Rock of Cashel, Cashel Cathedral, King Cormac's Chapel, Culdee Chapel and Round Tower in Clonmacnoise on the River Shannon south of Athlone (1853), and Loughmoe Abbey just south of Templemore (1854). There are also numerous views of Badger Hall, photographed with family, friends, and dogs "Pharaoh", "Jet", and "Flush", during 1854; and several portraits of the photographer himself. The photographs dated 1856 include a series of shots of Exeter Cathedral, and Greenstead Church (the oldest wooden church in the world), Bovinger Church, Blake Hall in Essex, and Battle Abbey and Pevensey Castle in Sussex. Capel Cure's experiments with photography are evident in two views of Roscrea Castle from 1852: one made with a single lens, the other with a double lens. He also identifies two ambrotypes he made in 1854, using the collodion wet plate process.Alfred Capel Cure was an officer in the British Army, and an early pioneer of photography. His uncle, the painter and photographer Robert Henry Cheney (1800-1866), taught him photography, and in 1850, Capel Cure began making salt prints of architectural subjects--manor houses, cathedrals, abbeys, and churches. Capel Cure was initially commissioned into the 55th Regiment of Foot, and later, as a member of the Grenadier Guards, he fought in the Crimean War, where he was wounded in the attack on the Redan at Sebastopol. He attained the ranks of Lieutenant-Colonel (1858) and Colonel (1863). Capel Cure died July 29, 1896, in an accidental explosion while dynamiting tree roots in his park.
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