Isambard Kingdom Brunel Standing Before the Launching Chains of the Great Eastern

What it is

This photograph was taken by Robert Howlett in November 1857 at the Millwall shipyard, during the troubled launch of the SS Great Eastern. It shows Isambard Kingdom Brunel, muddy-booted and smoking a cigar, standing in front of a giant drum of launching chain. Howlett had been commissioned by the Illustrated Times to photograph the ship. A print survives in major collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Why it matters

The picture captures Brunel near the end of his life, worn down by the difficulties of launching the largest ship ever built. It has become the defining image of the industrial age, showing an engineer not posed formally but caught casually at work, surrounded by the huge machinery of his own creation.

Look closer

• What does Brunel's pose and clothing suggest about how he wanted to be seen, or how Howlett chose to show him?
• Why might the chains behind him have been included rather than cropped out?
• What does this photograph leave out about the launch, which was in fact going badly at the time?