William Frederick Lake Price
(1810 - 1896)
 

William Frederick Lake Price was an English watercolourist and an innovator in mid-nineteenth-century photography.
Lake Price was trained as a topographical and architectural artist by the architect Augustus Charles Pugin. Lake Price exhibited his paintings and watercolours at the Royal Academy and the Royal Watercolour Society. In the 1850s he joined the London Photographic Society and the Photographic Exchange Club of London. In 1858, many of his photographic portraits were published in Portraits of Eminent British Artists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Frederick_Lake_Price

Don Quixote in His Study
1857
Albumen silver print from glass negative
31.9 x 28 cm
The MET
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/271528

 

This carefully staged tableau was among the most widely admired Victorian photographs. Price self-consciously sought to elevate the still-new medium to the level of "high art" by emulating the ambitious literary subjects, expressive gestures, and period details of grand history painting. Although this approach was largely overshadowed in subsequent years by one that championed qualities unique to photographic vision, theatrical staging has found renewed relevance in the work of many contemporary artists.