Great news: John van Laun’s MPhil 2021 study of John Cooke Bourne’s tinted lithographs of the London and Birmingham Railway is available via UCL Discovery as open access. I hear from John there is an aside which has currency today with the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Below is the connection he drew for me.
John Cooke Bourne’s Travels in Russia and Ukraine
Following John Cooke Bourne’s second railway book (History of the Great Western Railway, 1846), he spent considerable time in Imperial Russia, where he was a reasonably successful artist. Bourne’s sojourn began in February 1848 when he was commissioned to record the building of the suspension bridge over the River Dneiper at Kyiv.
Although Bourne initially used sketches no doubt based on his experiences gained as a railway artist, John argues, from 1852 he began to use photography under the instruction of Roger Fenton (1819-69). Although Fenton returned to London in 1853, perhaps due to the outbreak of the Crimean War in October 1853, Bourne carried on the work of recording through photography.
It was not until February 1855 that Fenton departed for the Crimea where he produced one of the most iconic war photographs. One, the aftermath of the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava in 1855, shows the detritus of cannon balls hurled at the mounted brigade led by Lord Cardigan into the ‘Valley of the Shadow of Death’.
Events in the Ukraine today remind us of Russian imperialist ambitions, In this one can suggest commonality with the ‘Russification’ of the Ukraine through the building of the Dneiper Bridge under Tsar Nicholas as being a contributory factor to the Crimean War which was so graphically recorded by Fenton – plus ca change.
