JANE CLIFFORD. THE DELPHIN'S TREASURE

This exhibition brings together 58 photographs of the works that make upEl Tesoro del Delfín(The Dauphin's Treasure), a collection of rock crystal and precious stone objects held at the Prado Museum. The photographs were acquired by the University of Navarra Museum in 2011 and 2018. The authorship of this documentary collection, commissioned in 1863 by the South Kensington Museum in London (now the Victoria and Albert Museum), is attributed to the British Jane Clifford, widow of Charles Clifford, who had just taken over his studio, established in Madrid since 1850. This is probably the first project of its kind carried out by a woman in Spain.

As a complement to Jane Clifford's work, four photographs are on display that form part of a later documentation project on the Treasury, carried out by Jean Laurent in 1878.

ACTIVITIES RELATED TO THE EXHIBITION

THE ARTIST

Jane Clifford(?-c.1885) was a British photographer who worked in Spain between the 1850s and 1860s. She was the first woman to become a member of the French Photographic Society. She worked for years in her husband Charles Clifford's studio, eventually inheriting it upon his death in January 1862. Months later, she undertook the project of photographically documenting El Tesoro del Delfín (The Dauphin's Treasure), the first of its kind undertaken by a woman in Spain. She continued to run the studio for the next few years, selling her extensive photographic archive and taking portraits.

The Commissioner. MARIO FERNÁNDEZ

Mario Fernández is a professor, curator, and exhibition organizer. He has extensive knowledge of photography and its documentation. He has a degree in Economics and Art History. He teaches at various academic institutions. He has taught classes in the official Master's Degree in Art Market at the Claves de Arte Foundation (Nebrija University in Madrid) as well as History of Photography in the seminar 'Dialogues in Contemporary Art: Photography-Painting Approaches and Confrontations' at the S.E.K University in Segovia. He has worked as a curator at the Sorolla Museum and the Prado Museum. In 2017, he curated the exhibition Watkins, the landscape of the United States in Sorolla's photographic collection.

RELATED ACTIVITIES

About Jean Clifford. Performative lecture by María Gimeno