Roger Fenton

Fenton was born in Crimble Hall, Heywood, Lancashire, on 28 March 1819. His grandfather was a wealthy cotton manufacturer and banker, whilst his father, John, was a banker and from 1832 a member of parliament. Fenton was the fourth of seven children by his father's marriage to Elizabeth Apedaile, his first wife. His father remarried after her death and had 10 more children by his second wife.

In 1840 Fenton graduated with a "first class" Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of London, having read English, mathematics, Greek and Latin. In 1841, he began to read law at University College, London, evidently sporadically as he did not qualify as a solicitor until 1847. He had also become interested in studying painting. In Yorkshire in 1843 Fenton married Grace Elizabeth Maynard, presumably after his first sojourn in Paris (his passport was issued in 1842), where he may briefly have studied painting in the studio of Paul Delaroche. When he registered as a copyist in the Louvre in 1844, he named his teacher as Michel Martin Drolling, a history and portrait painter who taught at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, but Fenton's name does not appear in the school records.

By 1847 Fenton had returned to London, where he continued to study painting under the tutelage of history painter Charles Lucy. They became friends and, starting in 1850, the two men served on the board of the North London School of Drawing and Modelling. In 1849, 1850 and 1851 Fenton exhibited paintings in the annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy.