Houses of Parliament,

ca. 1909

These two images of London’s Westminster Palace reflect the mutual influence of photography and print in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As a Pictorialist photographer, Coburn worked against photography’s documentary associations to create moody and expressive images, often drawing on influences from painting and print. He went so far as to call himself the “Whistler of Photography,” referencing the atmospheric style of painter and printmaker James McNeill Whistler. In Coburn’s photograph, Westminster Palace’s form is visible only in silhouette, its specific features otherwise indiscernible. Buhot, in contrast, carefully delineated every window of the palace, though his etching becomes looser and more playful in the sketchy framing marginalia. Unlike some of his etcher peers, Buhot was excited by photography’s possibilities as a tool for artists, and he often worked from photographs, as he may have for this image.