Toledo Museum buys F. Holland Day’s “The Seven Words” (1898): its most expensive photographic acquisition ever

The Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio (USA) has acquired the series “The Seven Words” (1898) by American photographer F. Holland Day (1864–1933): seven platinum prints in which the artist himself poses as Jesus Christ on the cross. The purchase is the most expensive photographic acquisition in the museum’s history and the first work by Day to enter its collection, as The Art Newspaper reports.

The work is expected to go on display in the fall of 2027, on the occasion of the museum’s reopening after a major reinstallation of its permanent collection. Museum director Adam M. Levine has described the series as “the most important photograph people don’t know,” a precursor to performance art and cinema, promising to display it “on a kind of altar, like a very important tapestry at the Victoria and Albert Museum.”

Day, one of the central figures of the Pictorialism movement, staged the photographs with theatrical meticulousness near his home outside Boston. He prepared costumes and props, designed a special mirror in the camera to observe himself, grew his hair long and fasted to transform himself into the role of Christ. His inspiration came from a Passion play he had seen in Germany — despite his Unitarian Universalist upbringing.

“The Seven Words” debuted at the First Philadelphia Photographic Salon in 1898, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and immediately sparked debate for its daring. Nevertheless, 29 of 30 Boston religious leaders approved the series. To create it, Day produced 250 plate studies, of which only about a dozen proved successful.

The Toledo copy is one of only three known originals in the world: the other two are held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (without the artist’s original frame) and at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Like the Boston copy, Toledo’s also preserves its original frame with inscriptions. Previously, the work had been part of the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which deaccessioned it around 1928.

The museum’s interest in this work dates back to 2021, when curator of American art Erin Corrales-Diaz identified a “gap in early photography” in the collection. The purchase was finalized at the Paris Photo fair in 2023, through the Bruce Silverstein gallery in New York.