Henry Peach Robinson (1830-1901) obinson was the most prominent exponent of High Art photography. His aesthetic was for the most part Academic and conventional. He aimed for photographs "as good ... painting in Raphael's time". His first and the most famous composite picture, "Fading Away" (1858) was a popularity-seeking exercise on a fashionably morbid theme. But there were strong links between Robinson's works and Pre- Raphaelitism. As the Pre-Raphaelites grew in popular esteem, so Robinson was obliged "to steal their clothes". He was in addition strongly Ruskinian. He believed that imagination, though paramount, must be based on observation. He lauded art as providing "thoughtful work for earnest men". Robinson's later move away from composite pictures suggest that he understood the contradiction involved between the camera's essential passivity and his own urge to compose. In his Pre-Raphaelite phase he attempted to realise this contradiction by representing moments of timeless significance in a "mediaeval" setting. In this he anticipates the work of Julia Margaret Cameron, as well as that of Rossetti's followers, Burne-Jones and the Symboilists..