A Chateau in Pau

The Englishman Farnham Maxwell Lyte spent most of his life in France settling in the southwestern town of Pau, where he acquainted himself with a group of photographers, including John Steward and Jean-Jacques Heilmann. Known for his photographs of scenes of the Pyrenees, his technical innovations were influential within the photographic field. Not only was he responsible for creating a dry collodion process called metagelatin, he also published reports in specialized journals on his experiments to strengthen negatives, to preserve wet collodion negatives with honey, and to enrich tonal qualities with gold chloride. As early as 1853, Lyte became one of the first photographers to employ the technique of superimposed skies. He was a founding member of the Société française de photographie as well as a member of the Photographic Society of Great Britain. He exhibited frequently in the major European cities from Dublin to Brussels, receiving several international awards.

In the last ten years only 5 photographs by Farnham Maxwell Lyte have been available for sale at auction.