The Photography of Victorian Scotland 9780748654628

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The Photography of Victorian Scotland

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The Photography of Victorian Scotland Roddy Simpson

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© Roddy Simpson, 2012 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 10/12 Goudy Old Style by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 5461 1 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 5460 4 (paperback) ISBN 978 0 7486 5462 8 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 0 7486 5464 2 (epub) ISBN 978 0 7486 5463 5 (Amazon ebook) The right of Roddy Simpson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published with the support of the Edinburgh University Scholarly Publishing Initiatives Fund.

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Contents

List of Figures

vi

Introduction

1

1. The Origins of Scottish Photography: Pioneering Activities in St Andrews and Edinburgh

3

2. David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson: the ‘Partnership of Genius’ and the First Art Photography

21

3. Photography for the Few: The Activities of the Enthusiastic and Artistic Amateurs

47

4. Photography in Demand: The Work of the Increasing Number of Professional Photographers to Meet Public Demand

68

5. Scots Abroad: The Achievements of Scottish Photographers Around the World

90

6. Tourists and Travellers: Images of Scotland Produced for the Rapidly Growing Tourist Market and Photographs Taken by Visitors

115

7. Recording Social Conditions and Industrial Change: Photographs of what was Being Lost and what was Replacing it

134

8. Photography as Art: Looking at the Images and the Arguments

154

9. Populist Activity and Pictorialism: Popular Involvement with Cheap and Mass Produced Cameras and Photographers with Artistic Aspirations

175

10. Scotland’s Enduring Photographic Legacy

186

Bibliography Acknowledgements Index

195 199 201

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Figures

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4

1.5

1.6 1.7 1.8 2.1

2.2 2.3 2.4

2.5

2.6

Unknown Man, daguerreotype, Ross and Thomson, c. 1850, author Leaf of a Plant, William Henry Fox Talbot, 1840s, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Sir John Herschel, Julia Margaret Cameron, 1867, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Sir David Brewster, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Detail of View from the top of the Scott Monument showing James Howie’s rooftop studio, Joseph Ebsworth, 1845, Edinburgh Libraries and Information Services and Capital Collections Hoddy and John Munro fishing at Flaipool, Horatio Ross, 1847, Victoria and Albert Museum, London Craigdarcourt, Horatio Ross, 1850, Victoria and Albert Museum, London Jerusalem, Mosque of Omar, from daguerreotype by George Skene Keith, 1840s, engraved by W. Miller, author Robert Adamson with his camera and David Octavius Hill with his sketchpad, from the Disruption painting by David Octavius and Amelia Robertson Hill, author Ayr-Market Cross, David Octavius Hill from Land of Burns, engraved by W. Miller, c. 1840, author Disruption painting, David Octavius and Amelia Robertson Hill, 1866, author Edinburgh Ale, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections The Morning After “He greatly daring dined”, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Mann Sisters, Jessie Mann standing with one of her older sisters, either Elizabeth or Margaret, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections

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7 8 10

11

15 17 18 18

22 23 24

26

27

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2.7 2.8

2.9

2.10

2.11

2.12

2.13

2.14

2.15

2.16

2.17

2.18

2.19

2.20

2.21

Figures

vii

Francis Horner MP, Sir Henry Raeburn, 1812, author Reverend Thomas Henshaw Jones, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Sir John Steell, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Hugh Miller, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Sheriff John Cay, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections A Reverie, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Mrs Rigby, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections The Scott Monument seen from Princes Street, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections The Dennistoun Monument with D. O. Hill, his Nieces and the Gravedigger, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections The Calton Cottar’s Saturday Night, David Octavius Hill, 1854, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Elizabeth Johnstone Hall, Newhaven Fishwife, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections The Pastor’s Visit, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1845, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections James Linton, his Boat and Bairns, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections A Lane in Newhaven, Fishwives at Home, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Fishergate, North Street, St Andrews, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections

30

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31

32

33

33

35

36

36

37

38

39

40

41

41

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viii

2.22 3.1 3.2

3.3

3.4 3.5

3.6 3.7

3.8 3.9 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13

3.14 3.15

3.16 3.17

3.18

Horae Subsecivae, David Octavius Hill and Alexander McGlashon, 1861, author Professor George Moir, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7, Scottish National Portrait Gallery Head of West Bow, James Francis Montgomery, 1840s, Edinburgh Libraries and Information Services and Capital Collections Bear Gates at Traquair House, James Francis Montgomery, 1840s, Edinburgh Libraries and Information Services and Capital Collections The Old Bridge and Castle at Inverness, Cosmo Innes, c. 1848, Trustees of the National Library of Scotland Unknown Man, Fairlie (possibly gardener at Creich Cottage), Hugh Lyon Tennent, 1840s, Edinburgh Libraries and Information Services and Capital Collections Kitchen Hut Gnarkeet Station, Port Phillip, Robert Tennent, 1840s, Trustees of the National Library of Scotland Strada Britanica, Malta, Sir James Dunlop, c. 1847–8, Edinburgh Libraries and Information Services and Capital Collections Sir James Dunlop, Mrs Frances Monteith, c. 1845, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles Landscape with Ruin, John Muir Wood, c. 1850, Scottish National Portrait Gallery Stirling, John Muir Wood, c. 1850, Scottish National Portrait Gallery Reid’s Close, Thomas Keith, c. 1856, Edinburgh Libraries and Information Services and Capital Collections Old Houses, Fisherrow, Thomas Keith, c. 1856, Edinburgh Libraries and Information Services and Capital Collections Carvings at Holyrood Abbey, Thomas Keith, mid-1850s, Edinburgh Libraries and Information Services and Capital Collections South Porch St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, John Forbes White, 1857, Courtesy of RCAHMS (John Forbes White Collection) Rev. David Thomas Ker Drummond, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7, University of Glasgow, Department of Special Collections Loch Earn, David Thomas Ker Drummond, 1864, Scottish National Portrait Gallery The National Gallery and the Royal Institution, William Donaldson Clark, c. 1858, Scottish National Portrait Gallery The Cowgate and George IV Bridge, Edinburgh, William

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50

50 51

51 52

52 53 54 55 58 58

59 60

61 62

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Figures

4.1 4.2

4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6

4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 4.14 4.15 4.16 4.17 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6

Donaldson Clark, c. 1860, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Brewster or box stereoscope, author Alta Vista Observatory, Teneriffe, from Teneriffe: An Astronomer’s Experiment, or Specialities of a Residence above the Clouds, Charles Piazzi Smyth, 1857, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Unknown Woman, Ralson, Glasgow, c. 1860, author Unknown Man, Low, Edinburgh, c. 1880, author Unknown Couple, Samuel Becket, Saltcoats, 1880s, courtesy of Wullie Evans George Washington Wilson’s St Swithin Street Printing Works, Aberdeen, George Washington Wilson, c. 1880, courtesy Aberdeen City Libraries Unknown Child, secured to a chair, Alexander Pithie, 1880s, author Miss Gilchrist, James Howie Jun., c. 1870, author Back of an A. & G. Taylor carte-de-visite listing branches, 1880s, author Unkown Child, post mortem carte-de-visite, unknown photographer, 1870s, author The Last Moments of the Prince Consort, carte-de-visite photomontage by Leopold F. Manley, 1861, author. Queen Victoria and John Brown, Balmoral, carte-de-visite, George Washington Wilson, 1863, author Comparison of the size of cabinet and carte-de-visite prints by John Horsburgh, author Back of a Marshall Wane print showing medals won, 1880s, author Unknown Woman, cabinet print, John Fergus, c. 1880, author Album, with decoration on a Scottish theme, author Jewellery with photographs, author President Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Gardner, 1865, Library of Congress Jefferson Davis and wife, Montreal, 1867, William Notman, McCord Museum 1-28149 Prea Sat Ling Poun, John Thomson, 1865, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Bronze Temple, Wan-Show-Shan, Peking, John Thomson, 1871–2, Trustees of the National Library of Scotland A Canton Junk, John Thomson, 1868–71, Trustees of the National Library of Scotland Beggars, Foochow, John Thomson, 1871, Trustees of the National Library of Scotland

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64 71

72 73 74 75

76 77 79 80 81 82 82 83 84 85 86 87 91 91 93 94 95 96

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The Photography of Victorian Scotland

x

5.7

5.8 5.9 5.10 5.11 5.12

5.13

5.14 5.15 5.16 5.17 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9 6.10

6.11

Recruiting Sergeants at Westminster, John Thomson, 1876–7, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections London Nomades, John Thomson, 1876–7, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections The Crawlers, John Thomson, 1876–7, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Abacus Seller, William Carrick, 1860s, Scottish National Portrait Gallery The Sower, William Carrick, 1860s, private The Temple of Minerva, Rome, Robert Macpherson, c. 1863, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections General View of Gubbio, Robert Macpherson, 1860s, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Armed Afghan Tribes, Frederick Bremner, c. 1900, author Scouts and Guides to the Army of the Potomac. October 1862, Alexander Gardner, Library of Congress Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter, Gettysburg, July 1863, Alexander Gardner, Library of Congress The Stuart Family Picnic, Pullman’s Island, New York, 1872, William Notman, McCord Museum 1-76723 Ellen’s Isle, Loch Katrine, George Washington Wilson, 1860s, author Loch of Park, Aberdeenshire, George Washington Wilson, 1859, author Princes Street, Edinburgh, George Washington Wilson, 1859, author The Silver Strand, Loch Katrine, George Washington Wilson, 1860s, University of Aberdeen Tay Bridge Dundee, from the South, George Washington Wilson, 1879, University of Aberdeen Dunnottar Castle, George Washington Wilson, 1860s, author The Wallace Monument, George Washington Wilson, 1870s, author Ellen’s Isle, Loch Katrine, James Valentine, 1860s, author Annotated album page with cabinet-size Valentine view scraps of Perth and Dunkeld, 1872, author High Street, Wigtown, James Valentine, 1880s, showing shop with photograph view scraps for sale, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Title page of Valentine Album, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections

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98 98 99 101 102

104

104 106 107 108 110 117 118 119 119 120 122 122 124 125

126 127

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Figures 6.12 6.13 6.14 7.1.

7.2

7.3

7.4 7.5

7.6

7.7

7.8

7.9 7.10

7.11

7.12

7.13

National Gallery and Free Church College etc., Archibald Burns, 1867, author Loch Katrine, William Henry Fox Talbot, 1844, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections The Trossachs, photographer unknown, Kodak round print, c. 1890, author Close No. 46 The Saltmarket, Thomas Annan, 1868–71, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Close No. 193 High Street, Thomas Annan, 1868–71, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Close No. 101 High Street, Thomas Annan, 1868–71, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Old High School Wynd, Archibald Burns, 1868, author The South Side of the Cowgate to the East of the Horse Wynd, Archibald Burns, 1870, Edinburgh Libraries and Information Services and Capital Collections Market Street and the Old Town from the Scott Monument, Thomas Begbie, c. 1860, The Cavaye Collection of Thomas Begbie prints: City Art Centre, City of Edinburgh Museums and Galleries Cardinal Beaton’s House from High School Wynd, Thomas Begbie, c. 1860, The Cavaye Collection of Thomas Begbie prints: City Art Centre, City of Edinburgh Museums and Galleries New Register House Thomas Begbie, c. 1860, The Cavaye Collection of Thomas Begbie prints: City Art Centre, City of Edinburgh Museums and Galleries Queen Victoria opening the Glasgow Water Supply, Loch Katrine, Thomas Annan, 1859, courtesy of Douglas Annan Outlet of Loch Katrine from East Slope of Ben Venue, Thomas Annan, c. 1864, courtesy of the Mitchell Library, Glasgow City Council Queensferry Columns, Looking Through Bridge, Evelyn Carey, 1887, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Inch Garvie and Fife – Bird’s Eye View, Evelyn Carey, 1887, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections. Constructing the Central Girder, Evelyn Carey, 1889, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections

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129 131 132

136

136

137 139

140

142

143

144 144

145

148

148

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7.14 7.15 7.16 8.1 8.2 8.3

8.4

8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9 8.10 8.11 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5

9.6 10.1

10.2

10.3

The Forth Bridge from the South, George Washington Wilson, c. 1890, author Linlithgow Palace sketch, Thomas Annan, 1862, courtesy of the Mitchell Library, Glasgow City Council Linlithgow Palace, Thomas Annan, 1862–6, author Untitled, Lady Hawarden, c. 1863, Victoria and Albert Museum, London Untitled, Lady Hawarden, c. 1863, Victoria and Albert Museum, London Symphony in White No. 2, The Little White Girl, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1864, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (Portrait of the Painter’s Mother), James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1871, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Thomas Carlyle, Julia Margaret Cameron, 1860s, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Marie Antoinette, Ronald Leslie Melville, 1870s, author Marie Antoinette and the Paris Mob, unknown artist and photographer, carte-de-visite, 1870s, author The Dark Mountain, James Craig Annan, 1890, author The White Friars, James Craig Annan, 1894, Scottish National Portrait Gallery Janet Burnet, James Craig Annan, 1893, courtesy of the Mitchell Library, Glasgow City Council From Dawn to Sunset, Thomas Faed, 1861, author Kodak Advertisement, 1892, author Kodak Brownie No. 2 Camera, author Unknown Woman, William Crooke, c. 1893, author Unknown Woman, Claude Low, printed out enlargement, 1901, author The Exhibition Illustrated, title page of first edition, 4 May 1901, with half-tone photograph of press opening, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections Glasgow International Exhibition, T. & R. Annan and Sons, postcard, 1901, author Mrs Jameson, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, photogravure by James Craig Annan, Camera Work, 1905, University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections The Birdcage, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, photogravure by James Craig Annan, Camera Work, 1909, author Stirling Castle, James Craig Annan, 1906, author

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150 151 152 158 160

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161 163 165 165 167 169 169 172 176 177 179 180

182 182

187

188 189

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Introduction

My interest in early Scottish photography arose from being a photographer and beginning to find out more about the history of photography, especially in Scotland. The more I found out the more fascinated and absorbed I became because of an increasing awareness of Scotland’s unparalleled place in early photography with innovative practitioners, masterful technicians and superb image makers. I now spend more of my time researching, writing and lecturing on the history of Scottish photography than making photographs. Since 2001 I have tutored a popular course at the University of Edinburgh on the photography of Victorian Scotland. I have found this rewarding and encouraging as well as stimulating further research. This book is based on the course and has been written because there is no single publication that covers the subject. There are many excellent books that cover aspects of photography in Victorian Scotland but none that give a complete overview. My approach has been to try and make the content accessible and provide a comprehensive introduction to what is a vast subject. But the content is about more than photography because photography cannot be separated from the society of its time. It is the story behind the photography that also enthrals and illuminates. This story provides a multi-faceted insight into Victorian Scotland covering art and science, literature and tourism, religion and industrialisation, colonialism and social conditions, and more, with the direct and tangible contact that photography provides. As well as tutoring at the University of Edinburgh I have been involved in research projects at the University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections, which has an exceptional holding of early photography not only in Scottish terms but internationally. I have had the privilege of working closely with photographs of rarity and quality and, thanks to the generosity of the University of Glasgow Library, many of them are reproduced here. The sequence of the book is basically chronological, from the invention of photography until the end of the Victorian period in 1901, when Queen Victoria died. However, as each chapter deals with a particular topic it has not always been practical to adhere to a strict time sequence. I have also exercised personal judgement on what is included in each topic

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The Photography of Victorian Scotland

as some photographers, and their activities, can come under more than one heading. What surprised me at first and continues to delight me is the wonderful richness and diversity of Scotland’s Victorian photography. I hope the reader will be able to appreciate this and even share my enthusiasm. There are numerous references and an extensive bibliography for those who want to pursue topics further.

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Chapter 1 The Origins of Scottish Photography: Pioneering Activities in St Andrews and Edinburgh

The practical invention of photography is historically accepted as dating from January 1839 and Scotland embraced it with unrivalled enthusiasm. In that month in Paris, Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre announced his daguerreotype process, shortly followed by William Henry Fox Talbot in London of his photogenic drawings. Both processes will be looked at but there were antecedents to these public announcements of the invention of photography and, more importantly, there were photographs before 1839. Photography was not an invention out of the blue, there was no ‘eureka’ moment, it had a pre-history and some of the equipment for photography was used for other purposes and the properties of certain chemicals to react to light was also known. It is worth bearing in mind that there were cameras before photography as this helps to set the context for the invention of photography. The optical principle of the camera obscura had been known to Aristotle in the fourth century BC and in China about the same time observations about the camera obscura were recorded. In it simplest form the camera obscura is a dark room with a very small hole in one wall. This is the only source of light and through this is projected the scene outside which appears inverted on the opposite wall. The size of the hole determines the sharpness and brightness of the image. In the early twelfth century the Arab scholar Ibn Ál-Haithan (Alhazen) stressed the significance between the sharpness of the image and the size of the aperture. The first published illustration of a camera obscura was by the Dutch physician Reinerus Gemma-Frisius in 1544 to show a method of observing solar eclipses. Later that century the Neapolitan scientist Battista Della Porta described the use of the camera obscura as an aid to drawing. Della Porta also described fitting a lens to the aperture. Shortly afterwards, in his famous work on perspective, the Venetian nobleman Daniele Barbaro also mentions fitting a lens to the aperture but with the further refinement of a diaphragm to vary the size of the aperture, thus affecting the sharpness of the image. The earliest mention of a small portable camera obscura was in 1657 by the Jesuit scholar Kaspar Schott at Würsburg, Germany, and in 1685 Johann Zahn, a monk, also at Würsburg, illustrated several types of small

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4

and portable camera obscura. The photo-historians Helmut and Alison Gernsheim state: In size and construction, Zahn’s cameras are prototypes of nineteenth-century box and reflex cameras. It is really remarkable that no further development took place until the middle of the nineteenth century: in 1685 the camera was absolutely ready and waiting for photography.1

The portable camera obscura was widely used by artists, both professional and amateur, to accurately trace scenes but it possessed the basic requirements of a photographic camera; a lens and a method of focusing.2 In fact some portable camera obscura, with minor adaptions, were converted to early photographic cameras. What the invention of photography was really about was to fix, using chemicals, the image that appeared in the camera obscura. The chemicals used to produce photographic images were the salts of silver and the properties of silver reacting to light had been known long before photography was invented. In 1725, the German chemist Johann Heinrick Schultze discovered that traces of silver impregnated with nitric acid, which formed silver nitrate, turned dark under the action of sunlight. The importance for photography was that it proved that it was light rather than heat that caused this. Later in the eighteenth century the Swedish chemist, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, and the Swiss librarian, Jean Senebier, published their experiments on the effect of light on silver chloride. At the same time as Scheele and Senebier were publishing their research, Dr Joseph Black (1718–99) of Edinburgh University was giving his famous lectures on chemistry. Black is considered the father of modern chemistry due to his pioneering of the quantitative approach to experimentation, which was the foundation for a revolution in chemistry. In one of his lectures he discussed the action of light in darkening chloride and nitrate of silver. There is another Scottish reference in the pre-history of photography. Not a great deal is known about Mrs Elizabeth Fulhame who was the wife of Dr Thomas Fulhame ‘an Irish born Edinburgh resident who had been a student of Dr Joseph Black’.3 In 1794 she published her book With a View to the New Art of Dying and Painting in which she related that about 1780 she got the idea of making patterns on cloth. This was by depositing gold and other metals on the cloth and by various means, including the action of light, leaving the outline of the pattern. Photohistorian Larry J. Schaaf believes that this introduced into British literature the idea of creating permanent images by light. In one chapter she explored the reduction of metals by light and talked about producing maps with rivers of silver so that they would be easier to read; these rivers would actually be formed by the action of light. Unfortunately, it appears that she received little encouragement. In the introduction to her book she states:

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Censure is perhaps inevitable; for some are so ignorant that they grow sullen and silent, and are chilled with horror at the sight of anything that bears the semblance of learning in whatever shape it may appear: and should that spectre appear in the shape of a woman, the pangs that they suffer are truly dismal.4

There was an attempt to apply the knowledge of silver chemistry and the camera obscura photographically before the close of the eighteenth century and it very nearly succeeded. This was in England by Thomas Wedgwood (1771–1805), who had a Scottish connection as he had studied at Edinburgh University from 1786 to 1788. It is a distinct possibility that he attended the lectures of Dr Joseph Black and that was where he first became aware of the sensitivity of silver salts, although it cannot be confirmed as the class lists for this period no longer exist. Thomas was the son of the well-known potter Josiah Wedgwood. He experimented with nitrate of silver and tried to use the camera obscura but the exposure times were too long. He did produce images on white paper and on white leather sensitised with silver nitrate, which were thought to be impressions left by leaves and other objects exposed directly to the sun, but none have survived. Wedgwood did not have a method of fixing the images to prevent the silver salts continuing to react with light and eventually obscuring the image. Although if care was taken and they were only viewed by candlelight they did last some considerable time and examples ‘could still be viewed by the mid-1880s’.5 Thomas Wedgwood suffered from ill health which prevented further experimentation and he died in 1805. The account of his experiments was co-written with Sir Humphrey Davy (1778–1829) and published in 1802. If Thomas Wedgwood had lived longer it is likely that photography would have been invented earlier. Wedgwood had come very close and the account of the experiments concludes: Nothing but a method of preventing the unshaded parts of the delineation from being coloured by exposure to the day is wanting, to render the process as useful as it is elegant.6

The earliest extant photographic image is generally accepted as being by the Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (1765–1833) and titled View from the Window at Le Gras. It is usually dated 1827 but could be earlier.7 Although the exposure was in a camera obscura and lasted for about eight hours, Niépce did not use a silver process. He used a bitumen mixture on a pewter plate to produce this image. His initial reason for experimenting was to try and produce a plate that could be used in printing. Niépce went into partnership with fellow Frenchman Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787–1851) but their collaboration did not last as Niépce died in 1833. It was Daguerre who was to invent the first practical process of photography. After the death of Niépce, Daguerre continued alone and his process

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was in any case different from that of Niépce. In 1835 it was reported that Daguerre: had found out a method of receiving, on a plate prepared by him, the image produced by the camera obscura, so that a portrait, a landscape or view of any kind, projected upon this plate by an ordinary camera obscura, leaves its impress there in light and shade, and thus makes the most perfect drawings. A preparation applied to this image preserves it for an indefinite period. Physical science has, perhaps, never offered a marvel comparable to this.8

It is possible that this may be a slight exaggeration as Daguerre was something of a showman and self-publicist whose main activity was the display of diorama shows which were large painted screens illuminated with dramatic and changing lighting effects. There is no record of Daguerre visiting Scotland but his dioramas depicted Scottish subjects including Holyrood Palace and the great fire on the High Street, Edinburgh, in 1824. The latter subject was also painted by David Octavius Hill (1802–70), the great pioneering Scottish photographer in partnership with Robert Adamson (1821–48). Certainly by 1837 Daguerre was producing remarkably successful photographs. The earliest surviving daguerreotype is a still life from 1837, signed and dated by Daguerre and in the collection of the Société Française de Photographie in Paris. The daguerreotype was on a silver-plated sheet of copper. These could be up to a whole plate in size, measuring 6½ × 8½ inches (16.5 × 21.5 cm), but the plates commonly produced by commercial photographers were smaller. In outline the process was to polish the silver side of the plate mirror-bright and chemically clean. It was sensitised by putting it silver side down over a box containing particles of iodine. The fumes, which reacted with the silver, formed light-sensitive silver iodide on the surface of the plate. It was then exposed in the camera. The light forming the optical image reduced the silver iodide to silver in proportion to its intensity. The exposed plate, which contained no visible image, was placed over a box containing heated mercury. The mercury fumes formed an amalgam with the freshly reduced silver and an image became visible. The plate was fixed in a bath of hyposulphite of soda (correctly thiosulphite of soda and similar to modern hypo fixers) which rendered the unexposed silver iodide relatively insensitive to further light action. Finally, the plate was washed in water and dried. There were limitations with the daguerreotype process, in particular that it only produced a single positive image which was an inverted mirror image and could not be used to produce copies. It was very fragile and had to be protected under glass and sealed. It was usually placed in an embossed case lined with velvet and was an appealing and intimate object (Figure 1.1). It could be very detailed but because the image was on a highly polished surface it could only be viewed from a particular angle, otherwise it would look like a negative. Even protected daguerreotypes could deteriorate, especially from

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The Origins of Scottish Photography

Figure 1.1

7

Unknown Man, daguerreotype, Ross and Thomson, c. 1850.

the edges. The daguerreotype process went through refinements, particularly to reduce the exposure time, and despite the limitations it remained popular until the late 1850s, especially in the USA. The process invented by William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–77) was the origin of what is now understood as photography by producing a negative from which numerous positive prints could be made. This was the calotype process which Talbot took about two more years to refine after his first announcement in January 1839 of what he at that time called photogenic drawings. The word calotype came from the Greek ‘kalos’ which meant beautiful and ‘typos’, an image, although it was also sometimes described as ‘talbotype’. Talbot had numerous associations with Scotland and lived in Edinburgh at various times.9 However, if it had not been for his inability to draw, it is unlikely that he would ever have invented the negative/positive process of photography. Talbot later explained: One of the first days of the month of October, 1833, I was amusing myself on the lovely shores of Lake Como in Italy, taking sketches with Wollaston’s camera lucida, or rather, I should say, attempting to take them: but with the smallest possible amount of success . . . After various fruitless attempts I laid aside the instrument and came to the conclusion that its use required a previous knowledge of drawing which unfortunately I did not possess. I then thought of trying again a method which I had tried many years before. This method was, to take a camera obscura and to throw the image of the objects on a piece of paper in its focus . . . It

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was during these thoughts that the idea occurred to me – how charming it would be if it were possible to cause these natural images to imprint themselves durably, and remain fixed upon the paper.10

By 1835 he was producing images and that of the lattice window at his home, Lacock Abbey, is said to be the oldest negative in existence. He mentions counting about 200 squares, which is quite an achievement considering it is about the size of a postage stamp. The exposure was lengthy, possibly an hour, until the image actually appeared. Because of other scientific interests, Talbot did not pursue his photographic research until prompted by the announcement by Daguerre in Paris in January 1839. A week later in London Talbot announced his photogenic drawings. These tended to be items placed on sensitised paper, particularly botanical specimens (Figure 1.2) as well as pieces of lace. During 1839, Talbot did produce more recognisable photographs using a camera, particularly at his home, Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire. Further experimentation reduced exposure times and this was especially due to the discovery of the latent image, which Daguerre had also done, making portraiture more practical because it was not necessary to wait until the image appeared. By early 1841 Talbot had refined his process and took out a patent. Fortunately, it did not apply to Scotland.

Figure 1.2

Leaf of a Plant, William Henry Fox Talbot, 1840s.

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The calotype process was laborious and the equipment cumbersome but perhaps not as much so as the daguerreotype. It was in two parts, the making of the negative, technically the calotype, and the making of the positive print. For both the negative and the print a piece of good quality art paper or writing paper was used. Talbot, like other early practitioners and especially the Scottish pioneers Hill and Adamson, preferred to use Whatman Turkey Mill paper and the watermark can sometimes be seen. For the negative the carefully selected paper was washed over with a solution of silver nitrate and dried by gentle heat. When nearly dry, the negative was soaked in a solution of potassium iodine for two or three minutes then rinsed and dried again. This was what Talbot called iodised paper and as long as it was stored carefully it could be kept for some time and was generally prepared in batches. Prior to taking a photograph, a fresh solution of gallo-nitrate of silver was mixed up. This was made up of equal quantities of a solution of silver nitrate and gallic acid. The solution was unstable and had to be used quickly. Under weak light this solution was used to coat the iodised paper and left to sit for about 30 seconds before being dipped in water and left to partially dry in the dark, sometimes blotting paper was used. This prepared calotype paper could be used completely dry, but was most sensitive when moist, and in any case had to be used within a few hours. In as dark conditions as possible the calotype paper was placed in a frame for sliding into the back of the camera. The scene was exposed by taking the cap off the lens, this could be a minute or longer, although later this could be reduced to as little as ten seconds.11 When the paper was taken out of the camera no image could be seen but, as in more modern film photography, an invisible latent image was formed by the action of the light. To develop this image it was washed over with a fresh solution of gallo-nitrate of silver in a darkened room. When it was judged that the development had proceeded far enough, the paper was washed over with the fixer, hyposulphite of soda, and washing and drying completed the process. It was Sir John Herschel (1792–1871) (Figure 1.3), an astronomer but involved in many nineteenth century discoveries, who discovered that hyposulphite of soda dissolved silver salts and ‘arrested the further action’. Herschel was also something of a linguist and proposed ‘photography’ to replace Talbot’s awkward phrase ‘photogenic drawing’ as well as ‘negative’ and ‘positive’.12 Herschel also invented the cyanotype, which was an iron based-process for positive printing. Making the print in the calotype process was slightly simpler but the same type of paper was used. The printing paper was soaked in a solution of common table salt (soduim chloride), dried and then brushed on one side with a solution of silver nitrate. This embedded light-sensitive silver chloride within the surface fibres of the paper. The dried paper was placed under the

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Figure 1.3

Sir John Herschel, Julia Margaret Cameron, 1867.

finished calotype negative, sandwiched together under glass in a printing frame and placed in bright light. Within upwards of fifteen minutes a visible image would form on the print paper. The printing frame usually had a hinged back so that part of the print could be checked to ensure that it had reached the correct density. This was contact printing and the print was the same size as the negative. The print was then fixed in hyposulphite of soda, washed and dried. The print image was usually a rich brown tone, sometimes tending towards red, sometimes to purple, depending on various factors and rarely fully controllable. This technically was termed a salted paper print or salt print. There were other uncertainties in the process, either arising from faults or impurities in the paper or from not applying the chemicals properly. It was a process fraught with difficulties, which makes the results achieved all the more remarkable. This is the stage where the story can be taken up in Scotland. No discussion of the beginnings of photography in Scotland can start without reference to Sir David Brewster (1781–1868) (Figure 1.4). There will be many references to Brewster regarding the beginnings of photography in Scotland but most importantly at this stage was his close friendship with Talbot and that he actively promoted the calotype in Scotland. Brewster was a remarkable

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Figure 1.4 Sir David Brewster, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7.

man in many respects and carried out research in several areas, particularly optics, and was the inventor of the kaleidoscope. Brewster’s correspondence with Talbot had begun in 1826, soon after the two scientists had been introduced by Sir John Herschel. Perhaps one of the remarkable things about the early years of photography was that within a few days of Talbot’s photogenic drawings being announced and exhibited at the Royal Institution in London, examples were being studied around the dinner tables of St Andrews. In 1838 Brewster, at the age of 56, had been appointed Principal of the United Colleges of St Leonard and St Salvator at St Andrews University. At the age of 79 he was appointed Principal of the University of Edinburgh, a post he held until his death nine years later. It was to be in St Andrews that the calotype process was to be pioneered in Scotland, although it would take until about 1842 before it was used consistently. An important factor to emphasise here is that when Talbot patented the process in 1841, Brewster persuaded him not to extend the patent to Scotland because it ‘would be unprofitable’. This was significant in generating interest in and experimentation with the calotype in Scotland and even its improvement. Although the daguerreotype was also free of patent in Scotland, it was a more complicated process and, at the risk of perpetuating stereotypes, it was also more expensive.

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Talbot provided details of his process to Brewster and with some companions experiments began. Principal among these companions were Sir Hugh Lyon Playfair (1786–1861), usually called ‘the Major’ from his military background, who was also Provost of St Andrews, and Dr John Adamson (1809–70), a general practitioner, sometime lecturer in chemistry and the elder brother of Robert Adamson. Others associated with early photographic experimentation in St Andrews included William Furlong and Sir David Brewster’s son Henry who was a Captain in the army. Sir David Brewster, Sir Hugh Lyon Playfair and Dr John Adamson were all leading members of the St Andrews Literary and Philosophical Society. It is worth mentioning societies for promoting learning. It was Brewster’s concern to improve scientific communication that led him to help found the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1831. Brewster, Talbot and Herschel were all actively involved in the British Association for the Advancement of Science and Brewster had already established the Royal Scottish Society of Arts in Edinburgh in 1821. This was the nineteenth century use of the word arts to cover innovation in all areas, particularly science, engineering and manufacturing. There was also the Royal Society in Edinburgh. There was much enthusiastic discussion of photography and experimentation by the members of these organisations and the exchange of experiences. This was especially the case with the Royal Scottish Society of Arts in Edinburgh. As soon after the announcement of the invention of photography as 29 May 1839 Mungo Ponton (1801–80), an Edinburgh lawyer, read a paper to the Royal Scottish Society of Arts titled Notice of a cheap and simple method of preparing paper for Photographic Drawing, in which any use of salt of silver is dispensed with. What Ponton had discovered was the light-sensitive qualities of potassium dichromate. Although not pursued by Ponton, this was to be the basis of many mechanical means of the reproduction of photographs and of producing permanent images. This was to have a huge impact on the visual culture of the nineteenth century and beyond and Ponton has been acclaimed as one of the leading pioneers of photography. Other presentations may not have had the impact of that by Ponton but there was no shortage, confirming the ferment of fascination in the new discovery. At the same meeting as Ponton presented his paper, Sir John Robison, Secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, described the appearance of daguerreotypes which he had recently had the opportunity of examining in Paris. There are other early references in the Proceedings of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts to photography, not only showing the willingness to experiment but to innovate both with processes and equipment. Already on 27 March 1839, Dr Andrew Fyfe described Talbot’s process of photogenic drawings and his own experiments and his use of different compounds to Talbot. He later described his improvements to the process. On 15 January

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1840 Fyfe describes the daguerreotype process and the problems he had encountered using it. On 23 November 1840 Thomas Davidson, an Edinburgh optician, made a presentation to the Royal Scottish Society of Arts describing his camera improvements and showed the camera he had made.13 The camera that Davidson described, which is brass and tubular, matches one in the National Museums of Scotland. On 11 January 1841 Davidson described further ‘important improvements’ to the camera obscura and a method of taking views by reflection. Advances were also being made with lenses at this time. Also in the capital experimenting with photography were the members of the Edinburgh Calotype Club, which will be described in detail in Chapter 3. Although there were advances, the basic camera design remained simple; typically consisting of two wooden boxes, the one sliding within the other. The front box with the lens was fixed to the baseboard and the slightly smaller rear box slid inside. The focusing screen fitted into slots in the rear box. The rear box would be moved until the image on the ground glass focussing screen was sharp and then secured in position. The ground glass focussing screen would be removed and a covered frame, later described as a dark slide, with the daguerreotype plate or the calotype paper put in its place. The cover protecting the sensitised surface would be slid out from the frame and the exposure made by removing the lens cap. At St Andrews, even with the details of the process from Talbot and appropriate equipment, progress was slow. At the Literary and Philosophical Society on 2 November 1840, Brewster exhibited a number of daguerreotype and photogenic drawings. It is not clear what these photogenic drawings were, whether made by those experimenting at St Andrews or examples from Talbot, because Brewster and his colleagues were still having difficulty with Talbot’s process. At the October 1841 meeting of the Society it is minuted that ‘a number of very fine daguerreotype and calotype drawings were exhibited by Major Playfair and Mr Adamson’.14 It is known that the calotypes were negatives although it is not certain if they were exposed in a camera or by placing a specimen on sensitised paper. It would appear that some time during the spring or early summer of 1842 Dr John Adamson finally mastered the calotype process either by himself or with the help of his brother Robert. By November 1842 things seem to have been going well in St Andrews. The Literary and Philosophical Society minutes report ‘that Major Playfair, John Adamson and David Brewster exhibited to the Society beautiful specimens of photography’.15 John Adamson is credited with making the first calotype portrait in Scotland but there is some debate about the date. The print and negative are in Dr John Adamson’s album in the National Museums of Scotland.16 The image is titled First calotype portrait taken in Scotland [in ink] May 1840 [in pencil]17 and is completely faded, lavender coloured and brown at the edges.

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The negative is pale and very faded but there is the outline of the face and dress of a female figure. The negative is dated underneath ‘May 1840’ with the following inscription: This negative calotype was taken in the spring May [in pencil] of 1840 [the 0 seems to have been changed from 1] by Mr Fox Talbot’s process, and before he had made it public – he explained the process in a letter to Sir D Brewster, and this picture was obtained by following his directions and using a temporary camera obscura made with a common small lens of curving glass an inch & a half in diameter – it is no doubt the first calotype portrait taken in Scotland, the sitting lasted nearly two minutes in bright sunshine.18

It is likely that this was written later and the date is not borne out by Brewster’s correspondence with Talbot about the difficulties of the process before 1842. If the month is accepted as correct, then a much more likely date for the print is May 1842. However, John Adamson’s claim to have taken the first calotype portrait in Scotland, is almost certainly true. The reason for the very faded nature of the print and negative is because it was only later that Adamson began to fix using hyposulphite of soda as discovered by Sir John Herschel, which he notes in the album. In August 1842 Brewster wrote to Talbot that ‘a brother of Dr Adamson who has been educating as an engineer is willing to practice the Calotype in Edinburgh as a profession . . . Mr Adamson has been well drilled in the art by his brother’.19 It must have taken some time to make the preparations because it was 9 May 1843 when Brewster wrote to Talbot that Robert Adamson ‘goes tomorrow to Edinburgh to prosecute, as a Profession, the Calotype. He has made brilliant progress, and done some of the very finest things both on portrait and landscape. His risk and outlay are considerable: and he is therefore anxious to make a good beginning’.20 Alison Morrison-Low writes that ‘the earliest period of Scottish paper photography was now over. It ended with Robert Adamson’s migration to Edinburgh.’21 Robert Adamson’s achievements in partnership with D. O. Hill will be the subject of the next chapter. Robert Adamson was to be the first professional calotype photographer in Scotland but he was proceeded by professional daguerreotypists. It is also likely that Robert Adamson knew something about the daguerreotype as his brother John and others associated with Brewster at St Andrews had experimented with it. The daguerreotype was almost exclusively used for studio-based portraiture although there are Scottish examples of it being used outdoors. The Edinburgh camera maker Thomas Davidson made landscape views of Edinburgh and examples survive.22 Other Scottish photographers who used the daguerreotype away from the studio will be mentioned shortly. There is an engraving of a painting by Joseph Ebsworth (Figure 1.5) that graphically captures the professional daguerreotypist at work. The scene is

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Figure 1.5 Detail of View from the top of the Scott Monument showing James Howie’s rooftop studio, Joseph Ebsworth, 1845.

looking north from the Scott Monument, Edinburgh, and dates from 1845. It shows the rooftop of one of the buildings on Princes Street being used as a studio by the Edinburgh photographer, James Howie, with a daguerreotype session in progress. It is not certain when Howie opened his daguerreotype studio. He was a portrait painter but in October 1839 advertised in The Scotsman an exhibition of daguerreotypes claimed to be ‘the first exhibition of its kind in Scotland’. These may have been the work of others and Howie later claims that his photographic business was established in 1840. It was an ordeal for those who wanted to be photographed by Howie as it is recorded that: His sitters had to climb three flights of stairs, and then by a kind of ladder reached a skylight through which they got access to the roof of the house. The posingchair, with something in the shape of a headrest fixed to the back, was placed against the gable of the adjoining building, and the operator used to take the sitter by the shoulders and press him down with the observation – ‘There! Now sit still as death’.23

Perhaps not surprisingly there are some grim expressions. By 1842 there was a daguerreotype studio in Aberdeen and others in Glasgow. One of the first Glasgow photographers was John Edwards who served his apprenticeship in London with Antoine Claudet who had received a licence from Daguerre. Edwards was perhaps attracted to Scotland because it was outside the daguerreotype patent. It seems that other photographers had the same idea as ‘at one time there were more photographers working in

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Glasgow than in London’.24 Edwards seems to have moved around because in March 1843 he was advertising a studio in Dumfries and on 7 September 1843 the following advertisement appeared in the Stirling Observer: Portrait Painting, by the patent process, Mr Edwards of the Royal Adelaide Gallery, London, Begs to inform the Nobility and Gentry of Stirling and its Vicinity, that he has erected his Apparatus for a few days at Mrs Stirling’s, Melville Terrace, for the purpose of taking Portraits by the daguerreotype Process, which is allowed to be the only method of obtaining a correct likeness. By the Patent Process, these Portraits contain all the beauty of a highly finished Engraving, and the truth that cannot be equalled by the most eminent painter, and the sitting not occupying more than a minute. Mr Edwards wishes it to be understood, that as these portraits are taken in the shade, sunshine in not necessary, and that they are so fixed, that time or change of climate will not affect them. Charge for Portrait 10s 6d. Specimens can be seen Ten till Four daily.25

Some of the Scottish photographers who began with the daguerreotype changed to other processes as these were introduced. One of these was James Howie, and he was succeeded by several generations of his family. The partnership of Ross and Thomson in Edinburgh began with the daguerreotype and showed great skill (Figure 1.1) and they were the first photographers to be awarded a Royal Warrant, by Queen Victoria on 14 June 1849, although that was for views of the Scottish landscape by the calotype process. Although the daguerreotype process was almost exclusively used by professionals there was a notable Scottish amateur and he was Horatio Ross (1801–86). Horatio Ross was born at Rossie Castle, the family estate in Forfarshire and was a renowned sportsman and briefly MP for Aberdeen (1832–4). From the late 1840s he took a particular interest in photography. The Edinburgh photographer James Ross, no relation, of the Ross and Thomson partnership, taught him the calotype process in 1849 and later commented that ‘since the days of the daguerreotype this gentleman has stood in the foremost ranks of amateur photography’.26 Horatio Ross had an enduring fascination with photography and was a founder vice-president of the Photographic Society of Scotland in 1856.27 Because of the technical difficulties of the daguerreotype process it was predominantly used in the studio which makes the outdoor images by Horatio Ross all the more remarkable. There are several posed sporting subjects as well as some portraits among a small collection of daguerreotypes by Ross in the Victoria and Albert Museum. A fishing scene, Hoddy and John Munro fishing at Flaipool (Figure 1.6), has the atmosphere of an action shot with a sense of concentration in the participants, although it is posed and required the subject to be still for up to a minute. Hoddy was Ross’ son, Horatio Ross junior. Ross is overcoming the difficulties and limitations of the process to create a natural looking scene. Another of his action-type shots of a sporting scene is much more strangely

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Figure 1.6 Hoddy and John Munro fishing at Flaipool, Horatio Ross, 1847.

composed. Craigdarcourt (Figure 1.7) shows Ross’ wife, Henrietta levelling a gun at a dead stag, propped up in the heather. Sara Stevenson describes this as ‘a fascinating picture – bizarre in its imitation of a violent instant and in breaking our historical idea of the Victorian lady’.28 It is a strangely compelling image. Henrietta Ross (1815–94) was also a more that competent photographer and she received praise for a photograph of her husband shown at the exhibition of the Photographic Society of Scotland in 1858–9, reviews saying: The Photographer in his Study – No 717 – by Mrs Ross, we would specially refer to as excellent.29 Mrs Horatio Ross’s picture ‘A Photographer in his Study’ in particular, is so very happy, in respect both of composition and finish, as to make it really a matter of regret that there are no others from the same clever hand.30

There are references to the involvement of women in photography in Scotland from the very beginning, as will be shown in subsequent chapters. There was at least one other Scottish amateur daguerreotypist who took his camera out of the studio. He was Dr George Skene Keith (1819–1910) who took daguerreotypes on a journey to Palestine in 1844, although none are known to survive. He was the brother of Dr Thomas Keith, who will feature in Chapter 3. George Keith’s daguerreotypes were made into

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Figure 1.7

Craigdarcourt, Horatio Ross, 1850.

Figure 1.8 Jerusalem, Mosque of Omar, from daguerreotype by George Skene Keith, 1840s.

engravings and published in the book by his father, Rev. Alexander Keith, Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion and these illustrations give an idea of the quality of the original daguerreotypes (Figure 1.8). From the first announcement of its invention photography had become

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an activity pursued with great enthusiasm, ingenuity and expertise in Scotland. How quickly the artistic potential was realised will be seen in the next chapter with the outstanding contribution made by the partnership of David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson. Notes 1. Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, The History of Photography: From the Camera Obscura to the Beginning of the Modern Era, Thames & Hudson, 1969, p. 27. 2. David Hockney, Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters, Thames & Hudson, 2001. 3. Larry J. Schaaf, ‘The First Fifty Years of British Photography 1794–1844’, in Michael Pritchard (ed.), Technology and Art: Birth and Early Years of Photography, Historical Group of the Royal Photographic Society, 1990, p. 11. 4. Larry J. Schaaf, ‘The First Fifty Years of British Photography 1794–1844’, in Michael Pritchard (ed.), Technology and Art: Birth and Early Years of Photography, Historical Group of the Royal Photographic Society, 1990, p. 11. 5. Larry J. Schaaf, ‘The First Fifty Years of British Photography 1794–1844’, in Michael Pritchard (ed.), Technology and Art: Birth and Early Years of Photography, Historical Group of the Royal Photographic Society, 1990, p. 13. 6. Thomas Wedgwood and Sir Humphry Davy, ‘An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings Upon Glass, and Making Profiles, by the Agency of Light Upon Nitrate of Silver’, Journals of the Royal Institution of Great Britain 1 (1802), reprinted in Photography: Essays and Images, Beaumont Newhall (ed.), Secker & Warburg, London, 1981, p. 16. 7. A. D. Bensusan, ‘When was the World’s Oldest Photograph Taken?’, Photographica World 2004/1, pp. 7–9. 8. Journal des Artistes, 27 September 1835. Quoted by Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Fifth Edition, 1997, p. 18. 9. Monica Thorp, ‘William Henry Fox Talbot and the Edinburgh Connection, 1855–72’, Studies in Photography 2005, pp. 24–33. 10. William Henry Fox Talbot, The Pencil of Nature, Longman, Brown, Green and Longman, London, 1844–46. Quoted by Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Fifth Edition, 1997, p. 19. 11. Sir David Brewster, ‘Photogenic Drawing, or Drawing by the Agency of Light’, Edinburgh Review 76, 1843, pp. 309–44. 12. Larry J. Schaaf, ‘The First Fifty Years of British Photography 1794–1844’, in Michael Pritchard (ed.), Technology and Art: Birth and Early Years of Photography, Historical Group of the Royal Photographic Society, 1990, p. 10. 13. Transactions of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, Vol. II, Neill and Company, 1844, pp. 21–5. 14. Bruce F. Pert, John Adamson 1810–1870 and Early Photography at St Andrews, thesis for M. Phil. Degree, St Andrews University, 1994, p. 64. 15. Bruce F. Pert, John Adamson 1810–1870 and Early Photography at St Andrews, thesis for M. Phil. Degree, St Andrews University, 1994, p. 75.

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20 16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

National Museums of Scotland, NMS T 1942 1. 1. National Museums of Scotland, NMS T 1942 1. 1, p. 18. National Museums of Scotland, NMS T 1942 1. 1, p. 19. A. D. Morrison-Low, ‘Dr John and Robert Adamson: An Early Photographic Partnership in Scottish Photography’, The Photographic Collector, Vol. 4, No. 2, Autumn 1983, p. 208. A. D. Morrison-Low, ‘Dr John and Robert Adamson: An Early Photographic Partnership in Scottish Photography’, The Photographic Collector, Vol. 4, No. 2, Autumn 1983, p. 211. A. D. Morrison-Low, ‘Dr John and Robert Adamson: An Early Photographic Partnership in Scottish Photography’, The Photographic Collector, Vol. 4, No. 2, Autumn 1983, p. 211. There is one in the library of the Royal Observatory Edinburgh and another in the National Museums of Scotland, although the latter is in poor condition. British Journal of Photography, 22 August 1879, p. 400. Quoted by Sara Stevenson and John Ward, Printed Light, HMSO, 1986, p. 29. John Hannavy, Victorian Photographers at Work, Shire Publications, 1997, p. 17. Stirling Observer, 7 September 1843. James Ross, British Journal of Photography, 14 February 1873, p. 75. Paschal Downs, ‘“The delight of their existence”: The Photography of Horatio Ross of Rossie (1801–86)’, Studies in Photography 2006, pp. 35–43. Sara Stevenson et al., Light from the Dark Room, National Galleries of Scotland, 1995, p. 56. The Daily Scotsman, 24 December 1858, NAS GD 356.4, f31. Daily Express, 8 January 1859, NAS GD 356.4, f35.

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Chapter 2 David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson: The ‘Partnership of Genius’ and the First Art Photography

The Scots wholeheartedly embraced photography and mastered the technical challenges it presented but it was the partnership of David Octavius Hill (1802–70) and Robert Adamson (1821–48), formed a few years after the invention of photography, that was to take the medium to a new level, with the application of unsurpassed artistic creativity. Their status in photography is emphatically confirmed by the photohistorians Helmut and Alison Gernsheim who wrote: D. O. Hill and Robert Adamson are universally accorded first place in the annals of photography. The artistic spirit with which their photographs are imbued has impressed all succeeding generations, and it is indeed astonishing that in its very first years the new art should have reached its highest peak in the magnificent achievements of these two Scottish photographers.1

Robert Adamson with his camera and D. O. Hill with his sketchpad (Figure 2.1) are shown in Hill’s painting titled The First General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, Signing the Act of Separation and Deed of Demission at Tanfield, Edinburgh, 23 May 1843. The painting not only has a large title but it measures about 12 feet × 4 feet 8 inches (360 × 140 cm) and hangs in the offices of the Free Church of Scotland at the Mound, Edinburgh. It is normally referred to as the Disruption painting and, as will be explained shortly, this painting was the reason Hill and Adamson started to work together. There is very little contemporary documentation about Robert Adamson and even less about his photographic activities, although there are some tantalising hints. It appears that nothing survives in has own handwriting, apart from a few scribbled words or numbers on prints or negatives. Robert Adamson was born on 26 April 1821 on the family farm of Burnside, several miles east of St Andrews. He was of delicate health and retiring in disposition but had a strong interest in natural sciences and an aptitude with things mechanical. At one time it seemed that he would pursue a career as an engineer and worked for a year or two in a millwright and engineer’s business in Cupar. He may also have worked in Dundee as there is an entry for ‘R. Adamson’ as an engineer aged nineteen in the 1841 census. However, because of his less than robust health he was not strong enough for the

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Figure 2.1 Robert Adamson with his camera and David Octavius Hill with his sketchpad, from the Disruption painting by David Octavius and Amelia Robertson Hill.

physical demands involved. It was his elder brother Dr John Adamson who is likely to have suggested photography as a profession. The technicalities of photography appealed to Robert’s scientific interests and, as was stated in Chapter 1, he was trained in the calotype process by his brother. What can be said with some certainty is that when Robert Adamson moved to Edinburgh in May 1843 he was an expert technician in the calotype process who ‘succeeded in producing excellent prints with a consistency not matched by his contemporaries’.2 Robert Adamson’s poor health, thought to be consumption (tuberculosis), persisted and he began to suffer serious problems from late in 1846 and returned to Burnside in late 1847, where he died on 14 January 1848. David Octavius Hill was born in Perth on 20 May 1802 and educated at Perth Academy. He showed an early predisposition for art and his father, a stationer and bookseller, sent him to train in Edinburgh in about 1821. He studied at the Trustees’ Academy School of Design in Picardy Place under Andrew Wilson, an influential painter and teacher who had himself been a pupil of Alexander Nasmyth. Hill was also part of the circle of Alexander Nasmyth, who Hill described as ‘the father of Scottish Art’,3 and was a friend of his son James, the engineer and inventor. Although Hill exhibited as a painter from 1823, his work concentrated on book illustration, notably for

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some of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley novels published by Robert Cadell and Tales and Sketches of the Ettrick Shepherd and The Land of Burns (Figure 2.2) both published by John Blackie. Hill was a well trained Scottish artist in technical terms and an accomplished draughtsman. He became Secretary of the Scottish Academy, later the Royal Scottish Academy, in 1830, a post he held until about a year before his death in 1870. In this post he was aware of artistic advancement, not only in Scotland but further afield, being involved in securing pictures for the annual exhibitions of the Royal Scottish Academy and regularly travelling around the British Isles. So in Robert Adamson there is probably the most technically expert and gifted photographer in Scotland and in David Octavius Hill, a mature well qualified, well-connected and accomplished artist. It looks like a promising basis for a partnership but there are other factors involved in producing what has been described as ‘a partnership of genius’. The event depicted in the Disruption painting (Figure 2.3) was the reason for the meeting of Hill and Adamson. The disruption of the Church of Scotland occurred when ministers walked out of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland to form the Free Church of Scotland. The main reason for this was democratic, so that congregations could appoint their own ministers. Hill was so moved by the event that he decided to paint a great commemorative painting. He was at the scene and he was directly involved as his brother-in-law, Rev. Robert Macdonald, was one of the seceding ministers. What particularly captured Hill’s imagination was the

Figure 2.2 Ayr-Market Cross, David Octavius Hill from Land of Burns, engraved by W. Miller, c. 1840.

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Figure 2.3

Disruption painting, David Octavius and Amelia Robertson Hill, 1866.

magnitude of the sacrifice the ministers were making by leaving the Church of Scotland. They were giving up their manses, churches and incomes. The moment captured in the painting shows the first minister to sign the Deed of Demission. He was the Rev. Dr Patrick MacFarlan of Greenock who was giving up what was thought to be the richest living in Scotland, about a £1,000 a year, a huge sum at that time. It was Sir David Brewster’s involvement that caused Hill and Adamson to first meet. Brewster took a prominent role in forming the Free Church and when he heard about the proposed painting, went to Hill and suggested that photography may be an efficient means of capturing likenesses for the painting. Brewster may also have had in mind a business opportunity for the newly arrived Robert Adamson. Hill went to see Adamson at Rock House for a demonstration of the process. Adamson seems to have spent his first few weeks in Edinburgh setting up his studio at Rock House. The only dated image from this period is a photograph of the former Royal High School on 17 May 1843, now in the Scottish National Photography Collection. Hill was so impressed by the calotype process that on 3 July Brewster was able to write to Talbot that Hill: was at first incredulous, but went to Mr Adamson, and arranged with him preliminaries for getting all the necessary portraits. They have succeeded beyond their most sanguine expectations. – They have taken on a small scale, Groups of 25 persons in the same picture all placed in attitudes which the Painter desired and very large Pictures besides have been taken of each individual to assist the Painter in the completion of the Picture. Mr D. O. Hill, the Painter, is on the eve of entering into partnership with Mr Adamson and proposes to apply the Calotype to many other general purposes of a very popular kind, & especially to the execution of large pictures representing different bodies & classes of individuals.4

Before going on to look at the reasons why Hill and Adamson’s collaboration seemed to gel so quickly and the exceptional quality of the work they

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produced, it is worth looking in a bit more detail at the Disruption painting. It has been claimed that the success of Adamson in capturing so many group and individual portraits was the reason for the failure of the painting. Hill’s original concept grew out of all recognition in an effort to fit everybody in. Instead of taking two to three years to complete, as Hill originally thought, the painting took twenty-three years to finish. It is also known that Hill did not complete it on his own. There is evidence that his second wife, Amelia Robertson Paton, who he married in 1862, assisted in completing the painting.5 It may not be a great work of art, and a fellow artist, Sam Bough, likened the number of individual portraits crammed in to ‘potatoes all in a row’. Yet it is a superb social document. Not only in relation to the event depicted but to the people included.6 Hill took a considerable degree of licence with the painting and this is perhaps revealing about his character. As the painting took so long to paint he did not show people how they were in 1843 but aged them, greying their hair and adding wrinkles. He also included people who were not present at the event in the painting. Sometimes these were important churchmen but quite often it was for personal reasons. One of these was his first wife, Ann Macdonald, who died in 1842, before the event even took place. As a final gesture he included the photographer Thomas Annan, and he is shown wearing a hat in the doorway at the back. When the painting was completed in 1866, Hill wanted to sell prints and he decided to have these done, perhaps appropriately, by a photographic process. The photographer was Thomas Annan, who had a special camera built, and the prints were done by the carbon process. The largest print was an impressive 21 × 48 inches (53 × 122 cm) and made up from three parts stuck together.7 What Hill and Adamson are most celebrated for are their portraits, and not just of members of the Free Church. James Nasmyth, son of the painter Alexander and an engineer and inventor, was a close friend of Hill and gives an insight into Hill’s outgoing and happy personality – a personality that had a great deal to do with persuading people to have their portraits made and even to enjoy the experience. This was an important ingredient and a counter-balance to the shy and retiring Adamson. Nasmyth wrote of Hill: His name calls up many recollections of many happy hours spent in his company. He was, in all respects, the incarnation of geniality. His lively sense of humour, combined with a romantic and poetic constitution of mind, and his fine sense of the beautiful in Nature and art, together with his kindly and genial feeling, made him, all in all, a most agreeable friend and companion.8

An indication of Hill’s exuberance and sociability is shown in his photographs and he was often his own subject. He is shown in Edinburgh Ale (Figure 2.4) with James Ballantyne and Dr George Bell in a photograph that has the feel of a modern snapshot of a spontaneous scene. The poses are relaxed and there are the faint smiles giving the impression of a pause in a

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Figure 2.4

Edinburgh Ale, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7.

small social gathering. It is devoid of awkwardness and belies the technicalities of the calotype process being used, which required a prolonged exposure. The Edinburgh Ale they were drinking was claimed to be a particularly potent brew that was said ‘to stick the lips together’. Dr John Brown, a medical man who was also an art critic and writer and a friend of Hill’s, had been photographed by Hill and Adamson and explained how Hill’s personality was a crucial factor in making portraits: Though little known as delineator of human character, he has many of the mental qualities proper to this department: he can throw himself out of himself, and be another; he has humour, which implies, we have always thought, not merely the character in its owner, but a power of seeing into the character of others; and he has a thorough human-heartedness and a love of his kind, that makes him lay out his affections on them whenever he sees them.9

This may help to explain the direct communication that can be experienced in the portraits. Hill could also show humour in his images poking fun at himself and in The Morning After “He greatly daring dined” (Figure 2.5), he appears hungover. Although like many Hill and Adamson photographs, more can be read into it and there is a serious undertone as Hill is pictured with James Miller, Professor of Surgery at Edinburgh University and a leading temperance reformer.

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Figure 2.5 The Morning After “He greatly daring dined”, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7.

Returning to James Nasmyth it is he who has to be thanked for another insight into Hill and Adamson’s working arrangements. He writes to Hill: How goes on the divine solar art? and that worthy artist Mr Adamson the authentic contriver & manipulator in the art of light and darkness? and the thrice worthy Miss Mann that most skilful and zealous of assistants.10

This not only confirms Adamson’s expertise but reveals Miss Mann, Hill and Adamson’s assistant at Rock House. That they had an assistant helps to explain their prodigious output in the few short years of their partnership. Jessie Mann (1805–67)11 was the assistant and is a strong candidate as the first Scottish woman photographer. She grew up as a near neighbour of Hill in Perth. She moved to Edinburgh with her two sisters, Elizabeth and Margaret, to live with their brother Alexander, who was Hill’s solicitor. When Alexander married the three sisters moved to Leopold Place, close to Rock House. There is very little evidence about Jessie Mann but in the archives of the Royal Scottish Academy there is a letter from her to Hill in intimate terms with a reference to photography12. There is a photograph by Hill and Adamson in Glasgow University Library of two women, one standing and the other seated (Figure 2.6). The standing, younger, woman is thought to be Jessie Mann13. It is not only that

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Figure 2.6 Mann Sisters, Jessie Mann standing with one of her older sisters, either Elizabeth or Margaret, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7.

she is the right age but the hand you see has a glove on. Early photography was known as the ‘Black Art’ because silver nitrate left black stains that were difficult to remove. A photographic assistant would have had stained fingers which would not have been very lady-like. The photograph of the two women was used for the Disruption painting and a third woman is included in the group in the painting. The three Mann sisters joined the Free Church at the Disruption so Hill would have wanted to include them in his painting. Hill and Adamson quickly established a compatible working relationship but it was more than just working together, it was a friendship. There are frequent references in Hill’s correspondence to Adamson as a friend rather than just a business partner. Hill also moved into Rock House in 1844. Their friendship was obviously close and is reflected in Hill’s expressions of grief at Adamson’s death when he wrote: I have today assisted in consigning to the cold earth all that was earthy of my amiable true & affectionate Robert Adamson. He died in the full hope of a blessed resurrection. His truehearted family are mourning sadly especially his brother the Doctor – who has watched him as a child during his long illness. I have seldom seen such a deep & manly sorrow. Poor Adamson has not left his like in his art of which he was so modest.14

Adamson was buried in the graveyard at St Andrews Cathedral. Hill’s feelings for Adamson also endured as he included his camera, draped with a black cloth, in his painting In Memoriam: The Calton 1862.

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The two men had respect for each others’ talents and these talents were complementary. Hill wrote that ‘Robert Adamson is the most successful manipulator the art has yet seen, [with] his steady industry and knowledge of chemistry’15. Adding ‘Adamson thinks he knows some things others do not’16. Perhaps hinting at the advances Adamson had made to the calotype process. What is clear is that Adamson succeeded in producing negatives and prints of unrivalled excellence. Hill admits that ‘I know not the process though it is done under my nose continually and believe I never will’17. So Hill did not interfere in what was Adamson’s area of expertise and responsibility. It is Hill’s aspiration for the process that is crucial. He wrote: I think the art may be nobly applied – much money could be made of it as a means of cheap likeness making – but this my soul loathes, and if I do not succeed in doing something worthy of being mentioned by Artists with honour – I will very likely soon be done with it.18

Hill took a great deal of care with the images and admitted that ‘the arrangement of the picture is as much an effort of the artist as if he was in reality going to paint it’19. It is worth remembering that at this stage Hill and Adamson were starting with a blank canvas. They had no photographic examples to follow. This was the very beginning of photography and in a sense Hill in particular was not aware of, or did not recognise, the limitations. It may be that Hill’s artistic aspirations, without an understanding of the technical problems, motivated Adamson to improve and innovate with the process. What they attempted was remarkable, and the level to which they succeeded, unsurpassed. The partnership was summed up by Helmut and Alison Gernsheim: It turned out to be an ideal association in which both partners played an equally important part: Adamson’s technical skill was indispensable to Hill, who in his turn showed an artistic conception of an unusually high order, a masterly sense of form and a sure instinct for bold and simple composition.20

An influence on Hill in his photographic portraits was Sir Henry Raeburn, perhaps Scotland’s greatest portrait painter and certainly a pre-eminent figure in the early nineteenth century. Although Hill had refined artistic sensibilities in composition and subtlety in arrangement and the use of accessories, it was his sure instinct for the massing of light and shade that especially showed his relationship to Raeburn. This subordinates certain details to concentrate attention on the main focus of the portrait, the head and often the hands. This gives a powerful characterisation. Raeburn had been influenced by Rembrandt and therefore it is not surprising that comparisons were commonly made between Hill and Adamson’s prints and Rembrandt’s etchings. The quality of a calotype photograph to look like an art print impressed Hill and was acknowledged by him when he wrote:

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The rough and unequal texture throughout the paper is the main cause of the calotype failing in details before the daguerreotype . . . and this is the very life of it. They look like the imperfect work of man . . . and not the much diminished perfect work of God.21

The Hill and Adamson photographs have close similarities to portraits by Raeburn who concentrates light on the head and hands. In his portrait Francis Horner MP (Figure 2.7) , the light picks out the head and the hands but there are also the composition devices so common in many of Hill and Adamson’s portraits: the subject sitting beside a table on which they rest and a book, or books, on the table. There is a similar arrangement in Raeburn’s well-known portrait of Lord Eldin. In the Hill and Adamson portraits there was a practical purpose in such arrangements as it assisted the subject in remaining still for the length of the exposure. How quickly Hill and Adamson were able to achieve outstanding results is shown in their striking portrait Reverend Thomas Henshaw Jones (Figure 2.8) from early in their working career in 1843. Like the Raeburn portraits, concentration is on the head and the hands, possibly holding a Bible. The sitter would have posed for a long exposure and this pracical problem has been overcome as the pose does not seem strained. Particular attention has

Figure 2.7

Francis Horner MP, Sir Henry Raeburn, 1812.

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been paid to the position of the head in the composition. The head is high in the composition, as in portraits by Raeburn. Hill, in making his compositions, was overlooking the technicalities and giving Adamson a challenge, as at this time lenses were sharper at the centre and this was where other early photographers tended to place the head. Another compositional consideration which Hill concentrated on was what photographers would now describe as cropping. This was appreciated by the great Scottish sculptor James Pittendrigh MacGillivray (1856–1938) who wrote: One of the most notable things about his [Hill’s] manner of filling the field was that he designed right up to the limit as a sculptor would do in designing and modelling a bas relief.22

The effect of light and shade, technically chiaroscuro, is pronounced in Hill and Adamson portraits and they did not restrict themselves to members of the clergy as had been the original purpose of the partnership. They photographed the intellectual, artistic and even celebrity society of Edinburgh and much else besides. Hill’s fellow members of the Royal Scottish Academy were often his subject. A portrait with real impact and characterisation is that of the

Figure 2.8 Reverend Thomas Henshaw Jones, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843.

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sculptor Sir John Steell (Figure 2.9), perhaps best known for the statue of Sir Walter Scott for the Scott Monument, Edinburgh. The light catches the side of his head and the hand it rests on while the other hand is tucked into his coat. Sara Stevenson says ‘this portrait is remarkable for its strength and simplification and could well serve as a model for Romantic practice in photography23. For the Steell portrait Hill did not use any props but he did in other images to add narrative. The writer and geologist Hugh Miller (Figure 2.10) is shown beside a carved gravestone with a chisel in one hand and a mallet in the other. This is because Miller started live as a humble stone mason and that is what is depicted. But the power is not just physical but intellectual and a man of determination is captured by the way the light strikes Miller’s face. In the portrait of Sheriff John Cay (Figure 2.11), books are not used for the subject to rest on but to indicate intellectual qualities. As well as being Sheriff of Linlithgow, Cay contributed to literary and philosophical journals and was prominent in learned societies. He was also an early photographer and a member of the Edinburgh Calotype Club. Professor Duncan Macmillan states that Hill and Adamson’s photographs are ‘amongst the first great works of art-photography, they are thoroughly modern, yet they also clearly look back to Raeburn and beyond him to Rembrandt . . .’24

Figure 2.9

Sir John Steell, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7.

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Figure 2.10 Hugh Miller, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7.

Figure 2.11

Sheriff John Cay, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7.

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Hill and Adamson photographs were exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1844, 1845 and 1846 and were something of a sensation. The nature of the collaboration between the two men in producing the images was made clear and they were described as ‘Calotype portraits executed by R. Adamson under the artistic direction of D. O. Hill’ and ‘Calotype portrait sketches executed by R. Adamson, designed and arranged by D. O. Hill’. There did not seem to be a problem exhibiting photographs with others forms of art at this time, although Hill as Secretary of the RSA would have had some influence. However, these were not the first photographs to be shown at the RSA. In 1841, ‘D. Montreal of Paris’ exhibited four daguerreotypes, two views of Paris and two of Edinburgh.25 The Edinburgh commercial photographer James Good Tunny, later commented that ‘Hill and Adamson’s calotype portraits became the wonder of every gathering of scientific or artistic men’26. Tunny also gives a very rare account of Adamson at work. Time after time have I gone and stood on the projecting rock below Playfair’s monument on Calton Hill, and drawn inspiration from viewing Mr Adamson placing a large square box upon a stand, covering his head with a focusing cloth, introducing the slide, counting the seconds by his watch, putting the cap on the lens, and retiring to what we now know to be the dark room. Oh! If I could only have got an introduction to these men, it would have been the consummation of my happiness!27

This emphasises another aspect of Hill and Adamson’s photography which is that with the calotype process all the photographs were taken outdoors, despite some appearing as if they were inside. It was not only men that Hill and Adamson photographed and some of their most well-known portraits are of women. These portraits are impressive for their openness and for the fact that they show women as individuals. Miss Elizabeth Rigby (1809–93), who later became Lady Eastlake and was an art critic, was by far the woman Hill and Adamson photographed most. In a composition titled A Reverie (Figure 2.12), Hill’s emotional involvement with the sitter can be detected. The pose in which Elizabeth Rigby is shown may represent a fictional or poetic character but there are overtones of love. The statue of two naked boys is said to suggest love, and Hill has drawn a small star on the negative, which is white on the print, and could mean a lover far away but seeing the same star. Hill later wrote ‘my old sweetheart Elizabeth Rigby – the tallest, cleverest & best girl of these parts’28. In 1857, after she had married Sir Charles Eastlake and moved to London, she wrote an article largely critical of photography at that time but said: It was in Edinburgh where the first earnest, professional practice of the art began, and the calotypes of Messrs Hill and Adamson remain to this day the most picturesque of the new discovery.29

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Figure 2.12

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A Reverie, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7.

Hill and Adamson photographed Elizabeth’s mother, Mrs Rigby (Anne Palgrave, 1777–1872) (Figure 2.13). She is shown in profile in a rather severe pose but it is to emphasise her strong character. It has been carefully done and the white lace contrasts with the dark dress and background. This photograph has often been compared with the famous painting Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (Portrait of the Painter’s Mother) by James Abbott McNeill Whistler. It is likely that the Hill and Adamson photograph was known to Whistler and this will be looked at in Chapter 8. Hill and Adamson’s photographs were not exclusively of people and their work included landscapes and, more importantly, townscapes with numerous images of Edinburgh. Their photograph of the The Scott Monument seen from Princes Street (Figure 2.14) is well composed as might be expected from Hill, who was principally a painter of place. The focus is on the fine gothic architecture of the recently completed monument, but putting it in context; showing its prominent location on Princes Street with the new town to the right and Castle on the left and the Royal Institution (now the Royal Scottish Academy) in the background. There are also interesting details, particularly the line of carriages in the foreground, one with a top-hatted driver, which must have remained stationary during the exposure.

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Figure 2.13

Mrs Rigby, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7.

Figure 2.14 The Scott Monument seen from Princes Street, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7.

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Hill and Adamson photographed in Greyfriars Churchyard, which became a popular location with subsequent generations of photographers. The Dennistoun Monument with D. O. Hill, his Nieces and the Gravedigger (Figure 2.15) is a pleasing composition but this is secondary to the overall meaning. There is the contrast of the living, and the young, with the dead. It was an image like this that appeared on the title page of bound presentation albums of prints prepared by Hill and Adamson. It is thought that the albums are meant to open with the moralistic message of the transitory nature of human life, a memento mori (remember you will die). Hill and Adamson’s photographs could also be for a more practical purpose, as preliminary sketches for a painting. There are a series of views from Edinburgh Castle that Hill used for his well-known painting, Edinburgh Old and New. It was first exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1848 and is now in the National Gallery of Scotland. The views make up a vast panorama but the quality does not show Adamson’s technical expertise at its best. This may not be surprising because he was working with a huge camera. It was made by Thomas Davidson of Edinburgh who was aware of its limitations and described it as being ‘about two feet square . . . but the imperfections in it, & the difficulty of preparing paper so large, were against it’.30 It could produce a negative about

Figure 2.15 The Dennistoun Monument with D. O. Hill, his Nieces and the Gravedigger, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7.

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13 × 16 inches (32.5 × 40 cm) and was almost exclusively used for landscape or architecture. Hill’s strong feelings for photographs is illustrated in a sketch by him titled The Calton Cottar’s Saturday Night (Figure 2.16), an obvious reference to the poem by Robert Burns but also to a painting by the Scottish artist Sir David Wilkie. It is of the interior of Rock House in 1854 and it shows that the walls of Hill the painter have photographs on display. Some look like portraits but it is possible to identify one of the photographs and it is Linlithgow Town Hall. It is behind the two piano players and shows Linlithgow Cross, the well and what is now called the Burgh Halls.31 The images that Hill and Adamson made of fishermen and women are amongst their most outstanding work for several reasons. In the Edinburgh Evening Courant on 3 August 1844 there was an announcement of Hill and Adamson’s ambitious plans to publish photographs in bound volumes rather than as individual prints. The first was to be Fishermen and Women of the Firth of Forth, followed by, Highland Character and Costume, Architectural Structures in Edinburgh, Architectural Structures in Glasgow, Old Castles and Abbeys in Scotland and Distinguished Scotchmen. None of these volumes appeared but it is an indication of Hill and Adamson’s ambition and prescience about the future of photography. However, they did make about 120 images for Fishermen and Women of the Firth of Forth. These are a remarkable illustration of social and working life, principally of the village of Newhaven. There is no better place to start than the portrait of Elizabeth Johnstone

Figure 2.16

The Calton Cottar’s Saturday Night, David Octavius Hill, 1854.

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Figure 2.17 Elizabeth Johnstone Hall, Newhaven Fishwife, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7.

Hall, Newhaven Fishwife (Figure 2.17), which is one of Hill and Adamson’s most exceptional photographs. It shows a strong and attractive woman with powerful simplicity and epitomises Hill’s sophisticated understanding of light, composition and ability in photographing women. Her face is half in shadow and is circled by the light bonnet against the dark background. The hands holding the basket are those of a woman used to hard work. The sun catches the horizontal wickerwork of the basket, which is next to the apron’s vertical stripes. A later copy of this photograph was described as Newhaven Madonna32, which may be a little fanciful but it does indicate the Old Master qualities of this image. But there is more to these photographs than superb individual images as there is a coherence due to the underlying intention to depict this working community as an ideal of democratic heroism. As a social commentary it was perhaps meant to contrast with the squalor and degradation of Edinburgh’s Old Town, showing that a working class community could have self-reliance and dignity through unity and mutual support. The group of fishwives with the local minister, the Reverent James Fairbairn, titled The Pastor’s Visit (Figure 2.18), which Hill has carefully organised, introduces a religious element. This is one of the very few dated photographs of Newhaven and was taken on 16 July 1845. The

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Figure 2.18

The Pastor’s Visit, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1845.

Newhaven taste for independence and self-determination was shown at the Disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843, when the congregation followed Reverend Fairbairn out of the Church of Scotland and formed the Newhaven Free Church. Fishwives Reading a Letter, Newhaven makes clear this was an educated and literate community, who kept in touch and there was also a shared interest and concern. James Linton, his Boat and Bairns (Figure 2.19) hints at the bond between father and sons and a future generation of fishermen. There is a photograph titled English Yachtsmen and Newhaven Fishermen indicating that although the fishing community was close-knit it was not insular and could be welcoming to outsiders. Hill used all his artistic skill in the compositions but his ability to put subjects at their ease, mentioned earlier by Dr John Brown, was crucial. There is a lack of artificiality and the people look relaxed, confident and comfortable in the photographs. Another relaxed scene of companionship is A Lane in Newhaven, Fishwives at Home (Figure 2.20). The women have a casual and informal appearance in this subtle composition, grouping close together, one leaning on another’s shoulder. It appears out of its time and could be, in its style, a documentary photograph from the 1930s. In photographic approach there is another reason that makes this an exceptional image. It is contra-jour, into the light, because you can see the shadows in the foreground. When the whole concept of the calotype process was to use the sun shining on a subject or scene to expose the negative, it is astounding to even entertain the idea of turning your camera into the sun to make an image. Adamson not only was

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Figure 2.19 James Linton, his Boat and Bairns, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7.

Figure 2.20 A Lane in Newhaven, Fishwives at Home, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7.

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inventive enough to try this approach but was expert enough to capture an image showing his technical virtuosity. The photographs were not exclusively of Newhaven and Fishergate, North Street, St Andrews (Figure 2.21) is an impressive image of women and children baiting the fishing lines. It looks like a deceptively simple street scene with a woman, child in arms, captured in apparent mid-stride. This photograph has been compared to a film-still and this hints at the stage management involved. The scene was not observed and quickly photographed. It was composed by Hill in a similar manner to the composition of a film set. He has had to position the camera, arrange, or direct, the people, calculate angles, even anticipate the light, and keep everyone still for the exposure. The striding figure is the central focus of the picture and gives a feeling of movement but the arrangement keeps interest throughout. Many claims have been made about Hill and Adamson’s photographs of fishermen and women: that they were the prototype of the twentieth century photo-essay; that they were the first photojournalism or the first documentary photographs; that ‘the Newhaven series presciently and uniquely anticipates photography’s social documentary role’.33 There may be something in these claims but the question arises of how Hill and Adamson, and predominantly Hill, got people to do the photographs in the first place – not only to obtain their co-operation but, more amazingly, to get them to look unselfconscious, even spontaneous. These qualities are far from straightforward and achievable for the best photographers nowadays with modern photographic equipment, let alone with the limited equipment and long exposures

Figure 2.21 Fishergate, North Street, St Andrews, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7.

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that Adamson would have had to use. It makes Hill and Adamson’s achievement all the more outstanding. Not all criticism of Hill and Adamson has been positive. Sir Roy Strong saw Hill in particular as lacking inventiveness and tied to hidebound formulas and academic tradition. He argues: the poses were devised by a man whose visual imagination had been formed some twenty years before – in the 1820s. It is in fact accidental that Hill created anything new in his calotypes, for it is impossible to argue that he was anything more than an artist working with a tradition of picture-making created at the close of the eighteenth century and the opening of the nineteenth.34

There were traditional influences in Hill’s compositions but in much of what he produced, and particularly in the images of fishermen and women, he went beyond any tradition and produced work of originality. Sara Stevenson writes: Regrettably, Hill and Adamson never published this series as a separate volume, so the complete intention of the first ‘documentary photo essay’ was not made clear at the time, but it is an extraordinary recognition of the possibilities of photography in social documentary and seems to have had no graphic precedent.35

Hill, with one or possibly two exceptions, retired from photography with Adamson’s death in 1848 as Adamson was irreplaceable in the collaboration in which his contribution was so significant. In the Hill and Adamson Collection at Glasgow University Library there is a group of mostly poor quality calotypes of the railway viaduct over the River Ayr at Ballochmyle. Due to the advanced state of the construction of the viaduct, these must have been taken after Adamson died. Hill made a landscape painting of the viaduct and its setting and there is some speculation as to whether Hill made the photographs himself, but that seems unlikely given what he said about knowing nothing of the process, although it is a possibility that the pictures could have been taken by or with Miss Mann.36 A photographic activity that is known about is his partnership with the Edinburgh photographer Alexander McGlashon in about 1861–2. Their output was small but the photographs were well received and praised in reviews when they were exhibited. These images can appear weak and conventional in comparison to the calotypes and the quality of the content is variable, with some images stronger than others. The photograph by Hill and McGlashon Horae Subsecivae (leisure hours) (Figure 2.22), with Dr John Brown and his cousin John Taylor Brown, was one of those shown at the Photographic Society of Scotland Exhibition in December 1861 and it won Hill a medal, although there was no recognition for McGlashon.

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Figure 2.22

Horae Subsecivae, David Octavius Hill and Alexander McGlashon, 1861.

Hill died on 17 May 1870 and was buried in the Dean Cemetery. A handsome bronze bust of him by his second wife adorns the grave. At the beginning of the twentieth century the Scottish art historian James Caw described the work of Hill and Adamson as ‘among the triumphs of photography and attain effects so beautiful that they are still the envy and despair of the best photographers’.37 Notes 1. Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, The History of Photography: From the Camera Obscura to the Beginning of the Modern Era, Thames & Hudson, 1969, p. 168. 2. Sara Stevenson, ‘Cold Buckets of ignorant criticism: Qualified success in the partnership of David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson’, Photographic Collector, Vol. 4, No. 3, Winter 1983, p. 340. 3. Hill to Samuel Carter Hall, 21 August 1848, Edinburgh Public Library. Quoted by Sara Stevenson, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Catalogue of their Calotypes taken between 1843 and 1847 in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, National Galleries of Scotland, 1981, p. 29. 4. Brewster to Talbot, 3 July 1843, NMPFT 1937-4926. Quoted by Sara Stevenson, The Personal Art of David Octavius Hill, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2002, pp. 14–15.

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5. Roddy Simpson, ‘Amelia, the Artistic Mrs D. O. Hill’, The Scots Magazine, June 2002, pp. 617–21. 6. John Fowler, Mr Hill’s Big Picture, Saint Andrew Press, 2006. 7. Roddy Simpson, ‘Subscribers to the Prints of the Disruption Painting’, Studies in Photography 2008, pp. 51–7. 8. Samuel Smiles (ed.), James Nasmyth, Engineer, An Autobiography, John Murray, 1883, p. 350. 9. John Brown, The Witness, 22 April 1846. Quoted by Sara Stevenson, The Personal Art of David Octavius Hill, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2002, p. 97. 10. Nasmyth to Hill, 27 March 1847, Royal Observatory Edinburgh. Quoted by Sara Stevenson, The Personal Art of David Octavius Hill, Yale University Press, 2002, p. 13. 11. Roddy Simpson, ‘Exposing Miss Mann’, Studies in Photography 2010, pp. 42–8. 12. Jessie Mann to Hill, 26 May 1856, Royal Scottish Academy, discovered by Monica Thorp. 13. HA0390, Glasgow University Library, Department of Special Collections. 14. Hill to Noel Paton, 18 January 1848, NLS Acc 11315. Quoted by Sara Stevenson, The Personal Art of David Octavius Hill, Yale University Press, 2002, p. 18. 15. Hill to David Roberts, 12 March 1845, NLS TD 1742. Quoted by Sara Stevenson, The Personal Art of David Octavius Hill, Yale University Press, 2002, p. 17. 16. Hill to David Roberts, 12 March 1845, NLS TD 1742. Quoted by Sara Stevenson, The Personal Art of David Octavius Hill, Yale University Press, 2002, p. 17. 17. Hill to David Roberts, 12 March 1845, NLS TD 1742. Quoted by Sara Stevenson, The Personal Art of David Octavius Hill, Yale University Press, 2002, p. 17. 18. Hill to David Roberts, 12 March 1845, NLS TD 1742. Quoted by Sara Stevenson, The Personal Art of David Octavius Hill, Yale University Press, 2002, p. 47. 19. Sara Stevenson, ‘Cold Buckets of ignorant criticism: Qualified success in the partnership of David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson’, Photographic Collector, Vol. 4, No. 3, Winter 1983, p. 337. 20. Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, The History of Photography: From the Camera Obscura to the Beginning of the Modern Era, Thames & Hudson, 1969, p. 166. 21. Hill to Mr Bicknell, 17 January 1848. Quoted by Sara Stevenson, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Catalogue of their Calotypes taken between 1843 and 1847 in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, National Galleries of Scotland, 1981, p. 21. 22. James Pittendrigh MacGillivray, ‘The Art of Photography’, The Photographic Journal, Vol. 70, 1930, p. 10. Quoted by Sara Stevenson, ‘David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson’, Mike Weaver (ed.), British Photography in the Nineteenth Century, The Fine Art Tradition, Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 41 23. Sara Stevenson, The Personal Art of David Octavius Hill, Yale University Press, 2002, p. 42. 24. Duncan Macmillan, Scottish Art 1460–1990. Mainstream, 1990, p. 164. 25. Charles Baile de Laperriere, The Royal Scottish Academy Exhibitors 1826–1990, Hilmarton Manor Press, 1991, Vol. 3, pp. 299–300.

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26. J. G. Tunny, ‘Early Reminiscences of Photography’, The British Journal of Photography, 12 November 1869, p. 545. 27. J. G. Tunny, ‘Early Reminiscences of Photography’, The British Journal of Photography, 12 November 1869, p. 545. Quoted by Sara Stevenson, The Personal Art of David Octavius Hill, Yale University Press, 2002, p. 117. 28. Hill to Jane Macdonald, July 1853, NLS Acc 11782. Quoted by Sara Stevenson, The Personal Art of David Octavius Hill, Yale University Press, 2002, p. 59. 29. Lady Eastlake, Quarterly Review, London, April 1857, pp. 442–68. Reprinted in Photography: Essays and Images, Beaumont Newhall (ed.), Secker & Warburg, 1981, p. 87. 30. Thomas Davidson, Photographic Journal, Vol. 6, No. 103, 1859, p. 264. Quoted by Sara Stevenson, The Personal Art of David Octavius Hill, Yale University Press, 2002, p. 41. 31. Sara Stevenson and John Ward, Printed Light, HMSO, 1986, p. 165, and Roddy Simpson, Hill and Adamson’s Photographs of Linlithgow, West Lothian History and Amenity Society, 2002, p. 26. 32. Glass negatives in University of Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections, Box 9, No. 10 and Box 16, No. 9. 33. John Falconer and Louise Hide, Points of View, Capturing the 19th Century in Photographs, British Library, 2009, p. 45. 34. Colin Ford and Roy Strong, An Early Victorian Album, The Hill/Adamson Collection, Jonathan Cape, 1974, p. 56. 35. Sara Stevenson, The Personal Art of David Octavius Hill, Yale University Press, 2002, p. 69. 36. Monica Thorp, ‘Hill and Adamson without Adamson? The Ballochmyle Calotypes’, The Scottish Photography Bulletin, No. 2, 1989, pp. 25–9. 37. James L. Caw, Scottish Painting Past and Present 1620–1908, Jack, 1908, p. 146.

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Chapter 3 Photography for the Few: The Activities of Enthusiastic and Artistic Amateurs

The prominent early photographers who practiced photography out of personal interest were at least as technically proficient as the very best commercial photographers, if not more so. They could also be inventive and experimental, taking a personal and individual approach to their photography as they were not dependent on commercial considerations. In the privately printed book Calotypes by D. O. Hill and R. Adamson Selected from his Collection by Andrew Elliot, which was not published until 1928, although the text was written in the 1880’s, John Miller Gray, the first Curator of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, wrote about Edinburgh that ‘from the first days of photography our city has been celebrated for the number and skill of its practitioners of the art’. Demonstrating the enthusiasm for photography in Scotland from the very start, Gray goes on: Shortly after the first discovery of the Calotype by Talbot, and its communication to Sir David Brewster, a few Edinburgh gentlemen visited the latter, saw his set of Calotypes, and were made aware of the method by which they were produced. On their return they entered eagerly on the study, and formed a little Calotype Club.1

There is some vagueness about the date of the visit to St Andrews but it is estimated that the Edinburgh Calotype Club was active from about 1841 to 1856 and is claimed to be the first photographic club in the world. In a letter from Brewster to Talbot on 5 October 1841 the slow progress by Dr John Adamson with the calotype process is described but Brewster also mentions that ‘difficulties have been experienced by several persons in Edinburgh’.2 In looking at artistic amateurs it is appropriate to start with the Edinburgh Calotype Club. The calotype was likely to have attractions for the ‘Edinburgh gentlemen’ over the daguerreotype because it was a negative/ positive process allowing numerous prints to be produced and it could be used more easily away from the studio. However, to get a print that bordered on being technically acceptable, regardless of refinements like content, required a formidable degree of expertise. This emphasises the achievements of the members of the Edinburgh Calotype Club. They produced prints of much greater quality than just the technically acceptable and there is a wide-ranging subject matter as well as many examples of careful and successful compositions.

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There is a scarcity of information about the Club. There are two main accounts and these are both fairly brief. As well as Gray there was a short article in the British Journal of Photography when one of the members of the club, Cosmo Innes, died in 1874, titled ‘Reminiscences of the Calotype Club’3. There is a mention in a letter from Brewster to Talbot in 1843 that can be interpreted as referring to the Club and its members’ interest in the calotype. Brewster says: I shall be very grateful for specimens of your Calotype labours in France, and indeed as many specimens, whether by English or French Suns as you can spare. I have the largest collection in Scotland, and whenever I go to Edinr. I carry a series along with me to delight the dilettanti there.4

That the Club was well established by the end of the 1840s is clear from a comment by William McCraw in the British Journal of Photography, who wrote ‘that there was by then [1849] an established “calotype club” in Edinburgh, mostly composed of advocates and such learned gentlemen.’5 There was likely to have been some fluidity in the membership but most of those known were involved with the legal profession. These were: John Cay (1790–1865), advocate and Sheriff of Linlithgow; Cosmo Innes (1798– 1874), advocate and Sheriff of Moray; George Moir (1800–70), advocate and Sheriff of Ross; James Francis Montgomery (1818–97), advocate and later a clergyman; Mark Napier (1798–1879), advocate and Sheriff of Dumfries; John Stewart (1813–67), estate owner; and Hugh Lyon Tennent (1817–74), advocate. Associated with the Club were: Sir James Dunlop (1830–58), student and later soldier; James Calder Macphail (1820–1908), Free Church divinity student and clergyman; and Robert Tennent (1813–90) brother of Hugh and owner of land in Australia. There was another person associated with the Club who will be mentioned shortly. Gray also gives an indication of how the Club operated: The constitution of the Club was of a very frank and informal kind. The members met at each other’s houses, had a friendly meal together, exhibited their productions, and discussed new experiments and their results.6

The Club members were contemporaries of Hill and Adamson and several were photographed by them, including John Cay, James Calder Macphail, George Moir and Mark Napier. It is interesting that Moir, in his portrait, (Figure 3.1) has his camera beside him. Moir did not restrict himself to photographing in Scotland but took his camera to Belgium and is among the earliest photographers of that country. James Francis Montgomery and Hugh Lyon Tennent are responsible for the greatest proportion of the photographs that survive. They were younger and may have had more opportunities for photography than their elder companions in the Club.

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Figure 3.1 Professor George Moir, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7.

The subject matter of the Club’s photographs was wide ranging covering architecture, history and portraiture. Montgomery’s Head of West Bow (Figure 3.2) must have been one of the first photographs of this picturesque scene, which subsequently attracted a succession of photographers. But Montgomery took his camera with him to other parts of Scotland. It would have been for historic reasons that Montgomery photographed Bear Gates at Traquair House (Figure 3.3) in Peeblesshire. The romantic legend is that the gates were locked in the autumn of 1745 by the 5th Earl of Traquair after the departure of his guest, Prince Charles Edward Stuart. The Earl vowed that the gates would remain locked until the Stuarts were restored to the Throne. They are still locked today. The Old Bridge and Castle at Inverness (Figure 3.4) was a picturesque scene photographed by Cosmo Innes which became an important historic record as the bridge was washed away in a disastrous flood on 25 January 1849. Hugh Lyon Tennent tended to concentrate on portraiture, including fellow members of the Club. But it was not just his own social circle that he photographed and he was prepared to turn his camera on ordinary people. This was particularly the case around Fairlie on the Ayrshire coast where his family had a house and he photographed working people. There is a fine portrait of an Unknown Man, Fairlie (Figure 3.5), which is possibly of a

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Figure 3.2

Head of West Bow, James Francis Montgomery, 1840s.

Figure 3.3 Bear Gates at Traquair House, James Francis Montgomery, 1840s.

gardener who is wearing an apron. It shows that Tennent was not elitist in the people he photographed, similar to Hill and Adamson in their photographs of fishermen and women. This approach from the beginning highlights what photography was to become an activity for all to enjoy and participate in and become known as the ‘democratic art’. Robert Tennent was the older brother of Hugh and is responsible for one of the most exceptional photographs to survive. This is Kitchen Hut Gnarkeet Station, Port Phillip (Figure 3.6), from his time in Australia, and it is recorded that ‘this picture was taken by RT with a Camera constructed out of a cigar box, & with the use of a telescope’.7 It is not only a remarkable record of a building of the time, possibly constructed of bark, but an exceptional achievement, showing a thorough understanding of the optics and chemistry required as well as overcoming extremely difficult environmental conditions with the most rudimentary of equipment. Robert Tennent was photographed by Dr John Adamson and the print is dated ‘April 1848’8, which is interesting for several reasons. It further shows the inter-relationship of early photographers in Scotland and confirms that the death of his brother Robert in January 1848 did not interrupt John Adamson’s involvement in photography.

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Figure 3.4 The Old Bridge and Castle at Inverness, Cosmo Innes, c. 1848.

Figure 3.5 Unknown Man, Fairlie (possibly gardener at Creich Cottage), Hugh Lyon Tennent, 1840s.

Other members of the Club to photograph abroad were Sir James Dunlop and James Calder Macphail who made images in Italy and Malta. Sir James Dunlop, although the youngest member of the Club was a fine photographer and Strada Britanica, Malta (Figure 3.7) is a strongly composed picture that gives a sense of place.

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Figure 3.6 Kitchen Hut Gnarkeet Station, Port Phillip, Robert Tennent, 1840s.

Figure 3.7 Strada Britanica, Malta, Sir James Dunlop, c. 1847–8.

It is a photograph of Sir James Dunlop (Figure 3.8) that reveals another person associated with the Club because it is by his aunt, Frances Dunlop (1805–98). She was married to Alexander Earle Monteith, who was an advocate and Sheriff of Fife and had much in common with many other members of the Club. There are four photographs known to be by Mrs Monteith9 and she is another candidate for the earliest Scottish woman photographer as she was a contemporary of Hill and Adamson’s assistant, Jessie Mann. The Edinburgh Calotype Club consisted of some very eminent men and one woman and their involvement in photography continued with most of the members of the Club being founder members of the Photographic Society of Scotland when it was established in Edinburgh in 1856. The photographs that the members of the Edinburgh Calotype Club produced are an outstanding achievement belying the part-time nature of their activities and they are an enduring memorial to their skill and tenacity. A contemporary of the Edinburgh Calotype Club and Hill and Adamson was John Muir Wood (1805–92), who began his photographic activities in Edinburgh in the mid 1840s. He was born in Edinburgh into a family of piano makers and music publishers. Wood was a remarkably good pianist, having trained in both Paris and Vienna, and was a music teacher, musicologist and impresario who travelled widely. How Wood got interested in

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Figure 3.8 Sir James Dunlop, Mrs Frances Monteith, c. 1845.

photography is not known but of the results it is said ‘they are the work of a man capable of originality in the science of photography as well as the art of photography – a rare combination’.10 Wood was highly educated and sophisticated both in his knowledge of chemistry and in his experience of the visual arts. He used the calotype process, although introduced a few variations of his own. He was a close friend of the leading Scottish painter and member of the Royal Scottish Academy, James Eckford Lauder, who had an album of Wood’s photographs. Wood knew, at least, of Hill and Adamson and their work and there are some similarities of approach between his portraits and groups and theirs. It is Wood’s townscape and landscape images that are most individualistic. They are ‘his personal response to the place’.11 Often in his compositions Wood uses the formal artistic techniques of a path, stream or road to lead the eye into the picture. By this he also achieves a greater sense of perspective and depth. Landscape with Ruin (Figure 3.9) is a well composed and even emotive image. The prominence of the ruined building gives the landscape a melancholy feel and also a feeling of human history. Could there be a reference to the Highland clearances, or the depopulation of the countryside and

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Figure 3.9 Landscape with Ruin, John Muir Wood, c. 1850.

the drift to the city? The composition shows Wood’s artistic and cultural awareness. Wood produced salted paper prints but he was also prepared to experiment with other metal salts in preparing his prints, including uranium, as well as toning them. This resulted in a variety of colour tones. It seems he enjoyed experimenting with colour and he also used different papers. It is said that ‘his discovery of colour and the subtle reaction of the calotype process gave his work its essentially lyrical character’.12 So like other early Scottish photographers he was not only asking questions artistically but also technically. He was not averse to considerable manipulation of his negatives and ‘he cut his photographs to different shapes, he added extra paper to the negative to make more sky, he painted in leaves and plants, he painted out obtrusive trees or branches, [and] changed the lines of hills’.13 It is perhaps Wood’s townscapes that arouse greatest interest, and include those from continental Europe. He travelled to Belgium in 1847 and his photographs are among the first in that country, along with those of George Moir mentioned earlier. Wood produced evocative images and in Stirling (Figure 3.10), the road leading you in is important in the composition but it is an individualistic

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interpretation. There is very little interest on the dark right or the stonework on the left. So the viewer is led to the light area round the corner and the lone figure is silhouetted against it. It makes you want to find out what is round the corner, out of sight. Wood was an accomplished photographer who was able to express a personal vision with considerable originality. He allowed his intelligence and feelings for a place to make a new and expressive idea from it. Although he lived until 1892 his photographic activities were restricted to the early years of photography and in the 1840s and 1850s he made a distinctive contribution to the new art. Another photographer whose career was short and overlapped with Wood was Thomas Keith (1827–95) who also showed technical expertise and sophisticated visual sensibility in the images he made. John Hannavy in Thomas Keith’s Scotland wrote: Too many photographers at the time felt that the mere fact of having successfully taken a picture made the end product worthwhile. Keith, with the eye of an artist, brought to amateur photography its first real master, using the vast potential of mid-Victorian Edinburgh as the subject for a series of compositions in line, texture, and shape, making a definitive statement and not just a series of records.14

Figure 3.10

Stirling, John Muir Wood, c. 1850.

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His work was also recognised by John Miller Gray, the first Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, who wrote: Many calotypes of quite exceptional beauty and artistic quality have been executed by Dr Thomas Keith . . . Among them is an extensive series of Edinburgh subjects, done in the early mornings before the ordinary day’s work began.15

The quality of the photographs by Keith is such that he is considered the most significant Scottish photographer after Hill and Adamson. Thomas Keith was born in the little village of St Cyrus in Kincardineshire where his father, Reverend Alexander Keith, was the local minister. After studying arts at Aberdeen University, Keith was, in 1845, apprenticed to Sir James Young Simpson at Edinburgh’s Old Royal Infirmary. He qualified as a doctor in 1848 and was appointed a house surgeon at the Infirmary. In 1853 he joined his brother George’s general practice in Edinburgh. George, as noted in Chapter 1, was a competent daguerreotypist and may have been a photographic influence. But it is interesting that Thomas chose a paper process. It is not certain when he started his photographic activities but it was probably about 1852 and he exhibited his first photograph in 1853. There were at that time a variety of processes which would have been available; the daguerreotype, the calotype and the wet collodion, which used glass as the backing for the sensitising material. This had been invented by the English sculptor, Frederick Scott Archer (1813–57) in 1851 and will be explained in detail in Chapter 4. Even by this time the daguerreotype was losing favour and the wet collodion was demanding because the glass plates had to be sensitised immediately before use and processed straight after being exposed, so needing close proximity to a darkroom. The calotype was a little crude but there was a refinement to it pioneered by the Frenchman Gustave Le Gray (1820–62) called the waxed paper process. The paper was waxed and ironed flat before the sensitising material was applied, therefore it was applied to a much smoother, more transparent, surface and this made the negative more detailed. It also had the advantage of being able to be sensitised well in advance. The choice of this process emphasised that for Keith photography was only a hobby that needed to fit in with his daily timetable of medical work. He wrote: I sensitise my paper overnight, for in the middle of summer I am almost always sure of clear mornings soon after sunrise, and most of my negatives have been taken before 7 in the morning, or after 4 in the afternoon. The light is then much softer, the shadows are larger and the half-tints in your picture are more perfect, and the lights more agreeable.16

The drawback with this process was that it was slower and exposures were around four minutes and sometimes up to fifteen. Although this did not cause too many difficulties with Keith’s choice of subject matter. In a paper he presented to the Photographic Society of Scotland, Keith

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gives another important insight about his approach to photography when he says: If you were to ask me to what circumstance more than another that I attribute my success, I should say, not to any peculiarity whatever in my manipulation, or to any peculiar strength of the solutions I employ, but entirely to this, that I never expose my paper, unless the light is first rate. This I have now made a rule, and nothing ever induces me to deviate from it; and I may safely say that since I have attended to this I have never had a failure . . . I am quite satisfied that the commonest cause of failure arises from the paper being exposed in a bad or indifferent light.17

As well as his technical proficiency Keith had an acute awareness of the effect of light and it is a recurrent and predominant theme in his work. The early influence on Keith is that of Hill and Adamson and he would have been familiar with their work and he is said to have practised his photographic skills in a location favoured by them, Greyfriars Churchyard. He later produced some significant images there. It is also obvious that he had his own intrinsic talent and adopted what would now be described as a photographic way of seeing. Keith’s seeking for the atmosphere of a place can show both intimacy and sympathy. Reid’s Close (Figure 3.11) in Edinburgh’s Old Town has undoubted atmosphere and a feeling for the past and of life having been experienced here over many generations, particularly evident in the decaying and patched up fabric of the buildings. In Keith’s photographs there can be the spirit, even the presence, of history. It could be said that these images ‘sing with history’ and he sought out the corners, closes and vennels of the Old Town for subjects that characterise this. However, he did not restrict himself to Edinburgh and Old Houses, Fisherrow (Figure 3.12) has the atmosphere and feeling of life having passed and been experienced here. Keith is again being careful about the composition and where there was the cart in the foreground of Reid’s Close, the empty chair in Old Houses, Fisherrow adds a central focus of interest. However, where Keith excelled was his masterly understanding of light and this is shown to superb effect with Carvings at Holyrood Abbey (Figure 3.13). He has caught the sun perfectly to show line and pattern and to delineate precisely that distinctive and evocative sheen on the weathered stone. It is the product of a singularly acute photographic vision. This image could only have been produced photographically and Keith is developing the aesthetic of the medium. The effect of light on stone is used to dramatic effect in Doorway of St Oran’s Chapel, Iona and even in an apparently straightforward image such as Palace of Holyroodhouse Keith uses the subtle effects of light. It is slanting across the front of the Palace, picking up the detail of the stonework and perhaps contrasting it with the natural stone of Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Crags in the background.

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Figure 3.11

Reid’s Close, Thomas Keith, c. 1856.

Figure 3.12

Old Houses, Fisherrow, Thomas Keith, c. 1856.

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Figure 3.13

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Carvings at Holyrood Abbey, Thomas Keith, mid-1850s.

In an article about Thomas Keith the American photographer and writer Gerry Badger makes a statement that is relevant to Keith but has more universal implications: It is all too easy when viewing such early work to focus attention on superficial resemblances, and from our contemporary vantage point credit historical photographers with conscious intuitions they did not have, and so distort readings of their work. Yet on the other hand, we have come to realise that by necessity photographers are concerned with intuitive, barely predicable, instantaneous visual decisions as well as intellectual programmes. So in this regard the idea of ‘progress’ or ‘intention’ as understood in the other arts becomes largely irrelevant. A photograph is a complex image, often containing many layers of meaning. The first and last of these, and perhaps a few others in between, concern the intuitive framing of the jumbled world before our eyes.18

It is worthwhile contrasting the photographs of Keith with those of his friend, contemporary and fellow medical man in Edinburgh, William Walker (d. 1885). Walker was a very competent and even technically

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innovative photographer19 but while he photographed many of the same subjects as Keith, his images appear as records and lack the aesthetic intent and intensity of Keith’s work. Because of the increasing demands of his medical career, which was particularly eminent, Keith appears to have given up photography around 1858. Before leaving Thomas Keith mention must be made of his close friend and relation through marriage, John Forbes White (1831–1904), who was also a fine photographer. White and Keith often photographed together using the same waxed paper process. Not surprisingly their images are similar but White produced work which was distinctly his own, especially of the landscape and buildings around his home area of Aberdeen. He also travelled with his camera throughout Scotland and to England and Wales and made a series of photographs in Orkney in 1857 which may be some of the earliest there. South Porch St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall (Figure 3.14) is caught in wonderful light, with the stonework showing the soft erosion of centuries of weather and there is the invitingly open door. White, for family business reasons, abandoned photography at about the same time as Keith. He became an influential art collector and connoisseur. Before his death he was able to see his photographs being appreciated anew because several were included in the photographic display of

Figure 3.14 South Porch St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, John Forbes White, 1857.

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the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1901, which will be mentioned in Chapter 9. Rev. David Thomas Ker Drummond (1806–77) (Figure 3.15) was photographed by Hill and Adamson, and this was almost certainly his introduction to photography. He appears, having been aged, in the completed Disruption painting, although he was not a member of the Free Church but did share the characteristic of leaving a parent church. He was a Scottish Episcopal minister but was something of an independent spirit and had disagreements and left. By the end of 1843 he had his own church and was the only minister in what was a sort of Free Scottish Episcopal Church or a bishopless branch of the Church of England. His Church was St Thomas the Apostle in Rutland Street, Edinburgh. Drummond became a keen photographer and wrote later, ‘it is impossible to say how much, under God, I owe both in mind and body to photography in my leisure hours’.20 He exposed large glass plates 10 × 12 inches (25 × 30 cm), favouring two variants of the dry collodion process – the malt and the tannin – and experimented with the chemistry and publicised his results. The exposures were much longer than the wet collodion process but had the advantage that the plates could be prepared in advance.

Figure 3.15 Rev. David Thomas Ker Drummond, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843–7.

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Loch Earn (Figure 3.16) might be thought a pleasant depiction of an ordinary subject but his pictures have to be seen as a reflection of his religious intensity. This image could be seen as a celebration of the detail and the general effect of a nature made by God. It could also be a reference to order within the garden and wildness outside. A photograph ‘surprising and strikingly original in its conception’21 and ‘that does not sit in its own time’22 are descriptions of The National Gallery and the Royal Institution (now the Royal Scottish Academy) (Figure 3.17), c. 1858, by William Donaldson Clark (1816–73). A feature of his photography was the inventiveness of his compositions and his ability to select viewpoints that avoid pictorial cliché. Clark was born in Ayr but he made his money from a successful printing business in Manchester and was able to retire early and moved to Edinburgh about 1860. After a period as a picture dealer, taking over the business of D. O. Hill’s brother, Alexander, he devoted his time to photography. Clark was an accomplished photographer before he left Manchester. He moved in artistic circles in Edinburgh and his closest friendship was with the landscape painter and member of the Royal Scottish Academy, Horatio McCulloch. In technical terms Clark used the collodion-albumen process which was a dry plate technique. It was very slow, with exposures of between ten and

Figure 3.16

Loch Earn, David Thomas Ker Drummond, 1864.

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Figure 3.17 The National Gallery and the Royal Institution, William Donaldson Clark, c. 1858.

fifteen minutes but the plates could be prepared in advance. From his printing background Clark had a keen interest in chemistry and applied it to his photography and introduced his own refinements. In The National Gallery and the Royal Institution Clark bases his composition on the contrast between different architectural styles – the Spartan severity of Playfair’s classicism in the National Gallery and the Royal Institution in the foreground and on the right, and Barry’s Venetian palatial mode of the Life Association of Scotland building in the background on the left. Both the National Gallery and the Life Association of Scotland building had recently been completed. It is unlikely that a contemporary painter or topographical artist would have selected this viewpoint. This illustrates Clark’s view that photography should have its own aesthetic and not seek to mimic the older, established aesthetic norms of the visual arts. Clark displays this in The Cowgate and George IV Bridge, Edinburgh (Figure 3.18) with convincing effect and contrasts the old and the new. The decaying buildings of the Old Town resonate with history and through them is the strident march of modernity with the over-arching structure of the recently completed George IV Bridge. Clark strongly believed that photography was a new art form but one that was in its infancy and subject to the limitations of the machine and

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Figure 3.18 The Cowgate and George IV Bridge, Edinburgh, William Donaldson Clark, c. 1860.

technical procedures which brought it into being. The character of photography as an art was yet to be defined. It needed its own vocabulary. Clark wrote: But there certainly is such a thing as photographic art, and a very beautiful art it is, and fitted to do wondrous things; and photographers might well be content to remain within its legitimate bounds. It is by cultivating it that reputation is to be gained, and not by endeavouring to trench on the domains of painting. If the public does not respect the pursuit of this art, depend upon it photographers have themselves to blame. Let them do justice to their own beautiful art, which is so well fitted to add to the enjoyment of the world, and the public will do justice to them.23

Clark was a prominent member of the Photographic Society of Scotland founded in 1856 and regularly exhibited at the annual exhibitions, to considerable acclaim. It is particularly from reviews of exhibitions like those of the Photographic Society of Scotland that references can be found to the activities of female amateur photographers. Mention has already been made, in Chapter 1, of Henrietta Ross exhibiting a photograph of her husband, Horatio, at a Photographic Society of Scotland exhibition. But there were others as a report in The Scotsman confirms:

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Mrs Ross of Rossie’s works are not alone in showing that photography has been most successfully pursued by the fair sex, some specimens by Lady Matheson being also remarkable for artistic beauty and taste.24

Lady Mary Jane Matheson (d. 1882) was the wife of Sir James Matheson of Lews Castle on the Isle of Lewis. She had the prerequisites for a successful amateur photographer at this time; wealth, spare time and artistic taste. Initially she concentrated on portraits but this was not just of her own social class and in 1856 she exhibited Group from Servants Hall. She also took her camera out into the countryside, which would have been a challenge as she used the wet collodion process, and the results could be described as genre compositions. Her A Picnic in the Glen was described as ‘an excellent collodion picture’25 and The Angler at Rest also received favourable comment. Lady Matheson’s location may have had a romantic attraction for her work, as one fanciful reviewer wrote: from the Island of Lewis – ‘Afar, amid the melancholy main’ – Lady Matheson sends several views, illustrative of her out-of-the-way world, where one would as little expect to see art cultivated as they would to find a vineyard and orange tree. And yet it is cultivated, and with success too.26

Like several other artistic amateurs, Lady Matheson’s photographic career only lasted a few years but produced significant results, which showed that she had not only mastered the technicalities but could produce creative results. It is perhaps appropriate to end this chapter with someone who was involved at the very beginning of photography in Scotland and whose career was by no means short. There was perhaps no more dedicated amateur photographer in Victorian Scotland than Dr John Adamson (1809–70). He was involved in the first experiments with Talbot’s calotype process in St Andrews and remained active throughout his life, changing processes as they were introduced. He also trained the well-known St Andrews professional photographer, Thomas Rodger, who will be mentioned in Chapter 4. Adamson did innovative work, particularly in portraiture, and experimented with capturing different expressions. In the main, his pictures are dictated by personal taste and there are many of family and people he liked and admired. However, the family pictures are further illuminated by the animals persuaded to pose, which could be horses, cats or his dog Blanche in Man and Greyhound. His work, particularly in portraiture, was of a very high standard and Miss Godfrey shows an attractive young woman, her face partly in profile and covered by a lace veil, imbued with fascination and even mystery. These photographs are very different from the studio portraits of the commercial photographers who will feature in the next chapter and they underline the artistic amateurs’ freedom to experiment and how successful they could be. These photographers did not have to deal with the constraints

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of having to respond to public demand or to catering to popular taste, which was the priority of those who had to make their living from photography. Notes 1. John Miller Gray, Calotypes by D. O. Hill and R. Adamson Selected from his Collection by Andrew Elliot, privately published, 1928, p. 3. 2. Letter from Sir David Brewster to William Henry Fox Talbot, 5 October 1841, National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, 1937-4888. 3. British Journal of Photography, 14 August 1874, p. 385. 4. Letter from Sir David Brewster to William Henry Fox Talbot, 3 July 1843, National Museum of Photography Film and Television, 1937-4926. 5. British Journal of Photography, 17 December 1869, p. 604. 6. John Miller Gray, Calotypes by D. O. Hill and R. Adamson Selected from his Collection by Andrew Elliot, privately printed, 1928, p. 3. 7. Index to the Edinburgh Calotype Album, Vol. 1, National Library of Scotland, Photo.med.33. 8. Index to the Edinburgh Calotype Album, Vol. 1, National Library of Scotland, Photo.med.33. 9. In the Brewster Album, J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu. See Graham Smith, Disciples of Light: The Photographs in the Brewster Album, The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1990. 10. Sara Stevenson, Julie Lawson, Mike Gray, The Photography of John Muir Wood: An Accomplished Amateur, Scottish National Portrait Gallery and Dirk Nishen Publishing, 1988, p. 9. 11. Sara Stevenson, Julie Lawson, Mike Gray, The Photography of John Muir Wood: An Accomplished Amateur, Scottish National Portrait Gallery and Dirk Nishen Publishing, 1988, p. 17. 12. Sara Stevenson, Julie Lawson, Mike Gray, The Photography of John Muir Wood: An Accomplished Amateur, Scottish National Portrait Gallery and Dirk Nishen Publishing, 1988, p. 18. 13. Sara Stevenson, Julie Lawson, Mike Gray, The Photography of John Muir Wood: An Accomplished Amateur, Scottish National Portrait Gallery and Dirk Nishen Publishing, 1988, p. 19. 14. John Hannavy, Thomas Keith’s Scotland, Canongate, 1981, p. ix. 15. John Miller Gray, Calotypes by D. O. Hill and R. Adamson Selected from his Collection by Andrew Elliot, privately published, 1928, p. 4. 16. Dr Thomas Keith’s paper on the waxed paper process read to the Photographic Society of Scotland, 10 June 1856. Quoted by John Hannavy, Thomas Keith’s Scotland, Canongate, 1981, p. 82. 17. Dr Thomas Keith’s paper on the waxed paper process read to the Photographic Society of Scotland, 10 June 1856. Quoted by John Hannavy, Thomas Keith’s Scotland, Canongate, 1981, p. 82. 18. Gerry Badger, ‘Dr Thomas Keith, Surgeon and Photographer’, The Photographic Collector, Vol. 2, No. 3, Autumn 1981, p. 78.

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19. Julie Lawson, ‘William Walker: An Early Amateur Photographer’, Scottish Photography Bulletin, Autumn, 1988, pp. 3–13. 20. Rev. D. T. K. Drummond, ‘Some Remarks on the Malt Process,’ Photographic News, 22 January 1864, p. 42. Quoted by Sara Stevenson, ‘The Rev. David Thomas Ker Drummond 1806–1877,’ Scottish Photography Bulletin, 2/1992, p. 4. 21. Julie Lawson, William Donaldson Clark, 1816–1873, Scottish Masters 15, National Galleries of Scotland, 1990, p. 10. 22. Roddy Simpson, ‘A Distinguished Art,’ The Scots Magazine, February 2009, p. 174. 23. William Donaldson Clark, The British Journal of Photography, 29 May 1863, pp. 259–61. Quoted by Julie Lawson, William Donaldson Clark, 1816–1873, Scottish Masters 15, National Galleries of Scotland, 1990, p. 17. 24. The Scotsman, 21 December 1857, NAS GD 356.4 f15. 25. The Edinburgh Courant, 12 January 1858, NAS GD 356.4 f24. 26. Aberdeen Journal, 24 December 1856, NAS GD 356.4 f1.

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Chapter 4 Photography in Demand: The Work of the Increasing Number of Professional Photographers to Meet Public Demand Photography quickly became an important and pervasive part of Victorian society reflecting tastes and interests. In an atmosphere of consumerism there was huge demand to own photographs and commercial photographers responded to this, resulting in an almost industrial level of production. There is a distinct contrast to Chapter 3. The photographers looked at then were free from commercial considerations and could take a personal and individual approach to their photography. They could afford to indulge themselves, be innovative, experiment and make mistakes. This chapter is about photography as a product where the purpose was to produce images which would sell and cater to popular demand. This photography was only innovative in improving the efficiency of the means of production, introducing different product lines and responding to changes in taste. Quality and originality in the image produced was not the over-riding consideration. However, among the mass of commercial photographers, while many were undistinguished, there were some very competent practitioners and a few whose work transcended commercial considerations. The rise of commercial photography started in 1851 with a discovery from an unlikely source. Frederick Scott Archer (1813–57), who was a sculptor by profession and a keen amateur photographer, discovered a method for sensitising glass plates which became known as the wet collodion process. Glass had been thought of as the ideal backing for photographic negatives but the difficulty was getting the sensitising material to stick to the glass surface. It was Archer who utilised the recently discovered collodion as the sub-stratum coating to adhere to the glass. His method was published in The Chemist magazine in March 1851 but Archer did not patent or try to profit from his invention. This did not stop Henry Fox Talbot from trying to claim that the new process came under his calotype patent because it used the negative/positive principle. Talbot was eventually persuaded that he was unlikely to succeed and he withdrew his claim. Archer died, penniless, in 1857, living long enough to see his process revolutionise photography. The process was to pour a small quantity of collodion (gun cotton dissolved in ether) to which had been added potassium iodide, on to a clean sheet of glass. An even coating was obtained by tilting the glass. The excess collodion was drained off from the evenly coated plate. When the ether,

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which was the solvent in the collodion solution, had almost evaporated and began to form a skin, it was treated in a solution of silver nitrate. The lightsensitive plate was loaded into a darkslide, put into a camera and the exposure made while the negative was still moist. Hence the description of the wet collodion process. If the plate was left to dry it lost its sensitivity. Exposure times were normally between about five and thirty seconds. Immediately after exposure the plate had to be developed by pouring over developing solution, which was usually a mixture of pyrogallic acid and nitrate of silver. When the shadow detail had been fully brought out the plate was given an initial wash to clear the residual developer and sometimes it was treated with potassium cyanide to enhance contrast. Another wash followed before being fixed using hyposulphide of soda and a final wash and dry completed the process. The wet collodion process was arguably the most important single contribution to the progress of photography since its invention. It had the advantages of shorter exposure times than either the calotype or the daguerreotype and the transparent base material did not interfere with the recording, and subsequent printing, of fine detail and delicate tone. The use of wet collodion negatives with albumen paper was to be the standard combination for the next thirty years and more. Albumen paper had been invented by the Frenchman, Louis Désiré Blanquart-Éverart (1802–72) in 1850. He coated thin smooth paper with egg white containing salt before sensitising. The result was a smooth semi-glossy surfaced paper capable of retaining all the quality contained in the original negative. However, there were drawbacks with aspects of both processes. Because of the necessity with the wet collodion process to sensitise and expose immediately, and as soon as exposed, to develop, close proximity to a darkroom was essential. This was not a problem for the studio photographer but the landscape or travelling photographer needed to carry a portable darkroom, which was usually a tent. This meant that a considerable amount of equipment had to be transported. The making of albumen prints was almost identical to salted paper prints using a printing frame but there was a problem with the finished print. Albumen’s chemical make-up included several sets of constituents which could react with each other to form yellowing in the white areas of the print, exacerbated by sulphur compounds in the atmosphere, which were particularly high during the coal-burning Victorian era. This discolouring can be a useful means of identifying albumen prints. As well as being used with albumen prints there were two other popular products that resulted from the wet collodion process and these did not require printing. There was the collodion positive, also called the ambrotype. This in essence is a glass negative which is underexposed. When it is backed using black cloth or card, or by applying black paint behind the image, it is converted to a positive. It was often packaged in a case the same

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as a daguerreotype but unlike the daguerreotype the collodion positive only shows a positive image. In examples that survive, and many do, the edges of the photograph are often tarnished and the black paint on the reverse side sometimes shows signs of flaking. The other product was the ferrotype, or tintype, which was a similar process to the collodion positive but the image support was black or brown enamelled metal plate instead of glass. They were very cheap in comparison to the other processes and could be rapidly produced but were generally of poor quality. They could be coated, exposed and handed to the customer in a little over a few minutes. The ferrotype was commonly used by itinerant, fairground booth or beach photographers. The plate is often found loose or sealed under card. Rust marks on the backing paper may help identify it or, if it is a card mount, its attraction to a magnet will indicate whether it is a ferrotype. Its use continued well into the twentieth century. Before looking further at how professional photographers took advantage of the wet collodion process, reference has to be made to another important photographic development in 1851, the year of Archer’s announcement. This was the lenticular stereoscope viewer which was due to the inventiveness of the Scot, Sir David Brewster, who has already been shown to have played a crucial part in early Scottish photography. The viewer was used for looking at a pair of photographs, sometimes called stereograms, and made the image appear in relief, giving a three-dimensional effect. Brewster did not try to patent his stereoscope viewer, possibly because earlier he had an unfortunate experience when he patented his invention of the kaleidoscope and that patent was easily breached. Given how hugely popular stereophotographs became, he may have missed out on a fortune. However, there was another reason. The principle of stereoscopic vision had first been established by the English physicist Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802–75) in 1838 when he published details of a viewing device he had constructed using mirrors. It was in 1849 that Brewster had invented his much more practical stereoscope, which used lenses instead of mirrors. Although Brewster’s device is technically the lenticular stereoscope it was also called the Brewster and the box stereoscope (Figure 4.1). A version was made by the Parisian optician Louis Jules Duboscq (1817–86) and shown at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851 with a set of stereo daguerreotypes. It was a sensation. Queen Victoria was personally so enthusiastic that Brewster presented her with a specially built viewer. The craze for stereoscopic photography had begun and it remained immensely popular throughout the remainder of the Victorian period and beyond. In 1856, Brewster boasted: It has been estimated that upwards of half a million of these instruments [lenticular stereoscopes] have been sold . . . Photographers are now employed in every part of the globe in taking binocular pictures for the instrument – among the ruins

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Figure 4.1 Brewster or box stereoscope. of Pompeii and Herculaneum – on the glaciers and in the valleys of Switzerland – among the public monuments of the Old and New World – amid the shipping of our commercial harbours – in the museums of ancient and modern life – in the sacred precincts of the domestic circle . . .1

The awareness and understanding that this single invention gave people of what other parts of the world looked like was enormous. There were refinements to the viewer. The American writer Oliver Wendell Holmes invented a simplified viewer which became very popular and was called the Holmes or the American stereoscope. These are still common and must have been manufactured in huge numbers. There were also viewers for looking at stereo photographs in books, which were actual photographic prints pasted onto the pages. One of the first books, if not the first, to be illustrated with stereo-photographs was Teneriffe: An Astronomer’s Experiment, or Specialities of a Residence above the Clouds (Figure 4.2), published in 1858 by Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819–1900), the Astronomer Royal for Scotland. The stereo photograph used the same principle as the binocular vision of the eyes. Initially this was achieved with one camera taking two separate photographs but between exposures the camera was moved about three inches, the distance between the eyes, to create the effect. Soon specialist cameras were being made with two lenses the appropriate distance apart with a flap at the front to act as the shutter mechanism. It is difficult to fully appreciate the impact on people of looking at stereo

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Figure 4.2 Alta Vista Observatory, Teneriffe, from Teneriffe: An Astronomer’s Experiment, or Specialities of a Residence above the Clouds, Charles Piazzi Smyth, 1857.

photographs in stereoscopes at the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in 1851 and subsequently. Especially, as the people who were looking at them were visually unsophisticated, compared to today. There was nothing like the abundance of images experienced now and illustrations of any kind were very limited. The experience of using a stereoscope was described as ‘mesmerising’. The most popular subject for stereo photographs was views of places and this literally gave people a window on the world. But the content was wideranging and could be enhanced by hand colouring or tinting the photographs. Colour photography did not become possible until early in the twentieth century, although as early as 1861 the renowned Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831–79) demonstrated the principles. Appropriately for the demonstration he used a piece of tartan ribbon but because the required materials were beyond the production expertise of the time, there was no practical application during the Victorian period. It was nearly half a century before the technology caught up and put Maxwell’s principles into practice. For stereo photographs comedy was often a theme and there were narrative and biblical subjects including Victorian moralising. Like all forms of visual media throughout time, pornography was also a subject. There was a thriving business for stereo photographs in Scotland, particularly of landscapes and places of historical and literary significance and these Scottish scenes and the photographers involved will be described in Chapter 6. Returning to the collodion positive, it could be an attractive and intimate object as it was in a case, like the daguerreotype, and these cases could have quite elaborate designs on the outside, be lined with velvet inside, have gilt

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mounts round the image, and some could be hand-coloured (Figure 4.3). The popularity of the collodion positive was during the 1850s and 1860s, but the cruder ferrotype lasted a lot longer and styles changed and very small images known as ‘gems’ (Figure 4.4) were produced in large quantities. Although the collodion positive was an attractive object it could not compete with what was to be the major boom in Victorian photography. This was the carte-de-visite and for the price of a single collodion positive multiple copies of photographs could be bought. The Victorian enthusiasm for the carte-de-visite amounted to little less than a mania and has been described as ‘cartomania’. What made the carte-de-visite possible was the detail of the wet collodion negative which was captured in the albumen print because a number of small photographs could be made on each photographic plate. The carte-de-visite photograph was patented by the French photographer André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri (1819–90) in 1854. The name of this photograph refers to its similarity in size to a visiting card, but it was not used for this purpose, although huge numbers were exchanged especially between family members. The small albumen print was pasted onto a piece of card measuring about 4 × 2½ inches (10 × 6.5 cm). Special cameras were devised for taking carte-de-visite photographs. Some had sliding backs which could give different poses on a single glass plate negative and others had multiple lenses, which gave a number of identical prints of one pose. A common practice was to get eight small prints on a 8 × 10 inch (20 × 25 cm) plate and these were cut and mounted on card as separate portraits. Unskilled labour was used for this work and the production of the

Figure 4.3 Unknown Woman, Ralson, Glasgow, c. 1860.

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Figure 4.4 Unknown Man, Low, Edinburgh, c. 1880.

photographer and printer was increased eight-fold. In the early 1850s an 8 × 10 inch (20 × 25 cm) portrait on paper would cost about £2–£3. Prices of this sort meant that photography was far beyond the reach of ordinary people, the vast majority of whom earned less than £1 a week. It was to the less well off that the carte-de-visite was particularly attractive and deliberately marketed with prices of 12s 6d for a dozen cartes-de-visite, and sometimes even less because of competition. In the 1860s the Linlithgow photographer James Paton advertised cartes-de-visite at five shillings a dozen.2 With prices like this a greater number of people could afford to visit the photographer’s studio. It has to be said that the vast majority of cartes-de-visite possess little merit. Due to the low price and the constant stream of customers, there was little attempt to produce originality in the portraits. The skill and ability of the photographers also varied greatly. However, millions of cartes-de-visite were produced. It is surprising how engaging some of these supposedly ordinary cartede-visite images can be. Unknown Couple (Figure 4.5) by Samuel Becket of Salcoats is an example. It looks to be a photograph to mark a wedding and the woman has a small posy of flowers and the man has a flower on his lapel. There is an enigmatic intimacy between them, as they each reflect on what married life together holds for them. This photograph is also representative

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Figure 4.5 Unknown Couple, Samuel Becket, Saltcoats, 1880s.

of the wider disregard for early photography in general, which was at one time prevalent, because it had been thrown into a dustbin where, fortunately, it was rescued. The scale of production for successful photographers could be very large and a surviving photograph of George Washington Wilson’s printing works in Aberdeen (Figure 4.6) illustrates this. There are rows of racks for the printing frames as well as glasshouses, so that printing can continue in poor weather, and a considerable workforce of mostly women to look after everything. Wilson is best known for his landscape photographs, which will be looked at in Chapter 6, but he also did portraits. Some interesting figures have survived for Wilson’s print production for 1864–5: In that year the combined output of landscape and portraiture came to a total of 553,331 prints. This total was achieved only by having over 400 printing frames out daily and a team of printers working long hours six days a week. The human effort was truly prodigious . . . [as] each print required at least ten labour-intensive stages to get it to a finished state ready for dispatch . . .3

It was predominantly women who did the production work, not just loading and checking the printing frames but washing, drying, toning, spotting, mounting and dispatching the photographs. In commercial pho-

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Figure 4.6 George Washington Wilson’s St Swithin Street Printing Works, Aberdeen, George Washington Wilson, c. 1880.

tography women were mainly involved in these subordinate roles. There is evidence that a few women were actually professional photographers, sometimes taking over the business from a deceased husband, but they were not common. A typical photographer’s studio would have large areas of glass to maximise available daylight for the exposure. There would also have been reflectors to direct the light and standard furniture was manufactured for the studio. There were apparatus to keep the subject still and a feature of studio photographs of children is that they often have a sash tied round their waist. This was not for decoration but to secure the child to the chair (Figure 4.7). A selection of painted backdrops were available often showing different scenes, mostly landscapes and sometimes with a balustrade to hint at a stately residence. There was an element of social aspiration in being photographed in such scenes and there were also clothes to dress up in, so studio photographers were pandering to these aspirations. But in their settings and compositions commercial photographers were borrowing from painting, mainly of the late eighteenth century, and Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds in particular seem to have been an inspiration. Studios could be extensive for the successful photographer and not just those in large cities. Here is a contemporary description of the studio of John Fergus in Largs: We enter the gallery. It is a fine lofty hall, with a gothic roof, built of polished pine . . . Everything is very neat and exquisitely clean. The hall and cool corridors are hung not only with photographs, but with many choice paintings; and at intervals

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Figure 4.7 Unknown Child, secured to a chair, Alexander Pithie, 1880s. are marble statuettes and fresh blossoms to add still further to the brightness and charm of the establishment . . . [there] is a series of five dressing rooms, all elegantly appointed, the rooms leading by other doors to the studios, of which there are three . . . The studios are light and lofty . . . On the light side there is dull glass rising to about twelve feet; above that the glass is clear, while on the shadow side there is also some four feet of clear glass for top light . . .4

Examples of John Fergus’ work show that he was a very good photographer. Thomas Rodger (1833–88) of St Andrews was also a professional photographer who produced fine work that went beyond mere commercial considerations. He was trained by Dr John Adamson and was one of the earliest professionals, setting up in business in 1849. Rodger combined technical expertise with artistry, much like his contemporary artistic amateurs, although he made his living from photography. In 1854 he showed his ability to innovate technically by presenting a paper to the Royal Scottish Society of Arts on his method of operating the wet collodion process. He is best remembered for his excellent portraits, some on a large scale, of notable residents and visitors to St Andrews but he also staged scenes similar to those of genre painting. His business prospered and he was able to commission an architect to design a substantial purpose-built studio. Rodger adapted to

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different processes as they were introduced and embraced the carte-de-visite, which was to have the most significant impact in the early growth of professional photography. However, possibly because of the influence of Dr John Adamson, there was an individuality and personal expression in his work not typical of commercial photographers. Rodger was not alone, as will be seen in later chapters with the work of Thomas Annan and his son James Craig Annan as well as Archibald Burns. Although these men earned their living from photography, they went beyond mere commercial considerations and created images of significant artistic merit. This is similar to photographers in subsequent generations, right up to today, who have earned a living from commercial photography but who have also expressed their individuality and creativity in photography through what is described as ‘personal work’. A photographer who typified this was Magnus Jackson (1831–91) from Perth who set up business there in the early 1850s. Cartes-de-visite were an important part of his successful business but he was active in all branches of commercial photography. His commercial priority was cartes-de-visite, as indicated in a letter he wrote to the Photographic Society of Scotland on 2 February 1863 about its forthcoming exhibition; ‘I intended to have sent a pretty good collection of landscapes, but the Carte de Visite mania has prevented me from getting any prints up in time’.5 The reference to landscapes is relevant because Jackson was prepared to take his camera outside the studio and visit locations around Perth and in the Perthshire countryside. This was not only for business reasons but for his personal photographic work, and in particular his fascination with trees and their setting. The care that Jackson took in this can be understood from his comment ‘the plan I invariably adopted is to examine the subject carefully to see how I can make the best picture, and at the same time, to give the best representation possible to the tree’.6 He succeeded consistently, imbuing single trees with a sense of majesty. For groups or rows of trees the viewpoint was carefully chosen to enhance the pictorial quality. His ability in this personal pursuit did not go unrecognised and he won several awards. In the years following the announcement of the wet collodion process and the introduction of cartes-de-visite many people were attracted to commercial photography. In Edinburgh throughout the 1840s and into the early 1850s there were only a handful of professional photographers, mainly using the daguerreotype process. Although as early as 1851 it was said that one of these, James Good Tunny (1820–87), was prosperous beyond his fondest hopes. However, by 1858 there were about twenty-four photographic studios in Edinburgh and they increased more significantly in the 1860s and 1870s to around sixty. But if photographers were doing well others in the visual arts were suffering. The Edinburgh portrait and miniature painter Kenneth MacLeay (1802–78) had an income of around £500 in 1849 but by

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1859 he was testifying before Edinburgh Bankruptcy Court that ‘the introduction of photography has had the effect of entirely destroying my previous business as a portrait painter’.7 MacLeay actually converted to photography in 1858 but too late to prevent bankruptcy. John Moffat (1819–94), a convert to photography in 1853 from engraving and crayon portraiture, was much more successful and he was later employing a staff of twenty in his Princes Street premises. It was also fairly common for there to be succeeding generations of photographers in a family and the Moffat business survived on Princes Street until the 1960s. Changes were made to the appearance of the carte-de-visite as marketing ploys. A vignette style was introduced and there were oval portraits, which were called medallions. These innovations were to encourage more customers and return visits and not anything to do with the quality of portraiture. The carte-de-visite could also be hand tinted at additional cost. An attraction of visiting a commercial photographer’s studio was that the subject could get dressed up. There were dressing rooms with costumes. There is a carte-de-visite by the Princes Street photographer James Howie Jun of a young women named Miss Gilchrist (Figure 4.8) wearing an academic gown and a mortar board. It dates from about 1870, before women would wear these but she has decided this is how she wanted to be photographed.8

Figure 4.8 Miss Gilchrist, James Howie Jun., c. 1870.

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It was two Scottish brothers, Andrew and George Taylor, from Aberdeen who capitalised on the popularity of cartes-de-visite on an enormous scale. As A. & G. Taylor the brothers established an extremely successful and profitable chain of photographic studios, which were listed on the back of their cartes-de-visite (Figure 4.9). They had studios outside the United Kingdon and claimed to be the ‘Largest Photographers in the World’.9 They offered packages of photographs on the club system at so much per week, which were vigorously promoted. It was a winning formula and as the weekly sum could be very modest, photography was put within the reach of many more people. They typified the entrepreneurial zeal of the Victorian period and it was said: In deliberately courting the mass market, [George] Taylor’s thinking was in line with that of a number of equally enterprising and successful tradesmen working in other areas of the retail industry at the time. Men like Thomas Lipton and Jesse Boot.10

It was not only personal portraits that interested the Victorians, they also collected, in huge numbers, photographs of personalities of the time and in particular royalty. Although to current sensibilities there was a more macabre subject for cartes-de-visite: photographs of the actual dead were

Figure 4.9 Back of an A. & G. Taylor carte-de-visite listing branches, 1880s.

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taken and were popular, particularly if it was a baby (Figure 4.10) or young child. In times of high infant mortality this could have been the only visual record of a dead child. The Victorians had a different attitude to death and not only when they were personally involved. It is claimed that 70,000 portraits of Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, were sold during the week following his untimely death in December 1861. One carte-de-visite was The Last Moments of the Prince Consort (Figure 4.11). A very well-known photograph is of Queen Victoria with John Brown holding her horse and it was a very popular carte-de-visite (Figure 4.12). The original photograph was by George Washington Wilson and dates from 20 October 1863. However, the cropping of the original photograph for the carte-de-visite distorted the meaning and led to Queen Victoria being described in the photograph as ‘Mrs Brown’. The original photograph included head keeper John Grant who had led Prince Albert’s pony. It was commissioned by Queen Victoria and conceived to show loss with Grant indicating the absence of Albert. Roger Taylor in his book about George Washington Wilson, says ‘it is curious that a photograph originally intended as a widow’s tribute should come to be viewed as evidence of indiscretion’.11 In her personal album, which has the full photograph, the Queen added the caption ‘A Highland Widow.’12

Figure 4.10 Unknown Child, post mortem carte-de-visite, unknown photographer, 1870s.

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Figure 4.11 The Last Moments of the Prince Consort, carte-de-visite photomontage by Leopold F. Manley, 1861.

Figure 4.12 Queen Victoria and John Brown, Balmoral, carte-de-visite, George Washington Wilson, 1863.

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Celebrities from the days before photography also appeared on cartes-devisite and these were usually copies of paintings. Historic figures like Mary, Queen of Scots and those from literature with Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scot being popular. Photographs of paintings in general and other works of art appeared on cartes-de-visite, making them much more widely accessible. This is an aspect of the multifaceted relationship between photography and painting which will be looked at in Chapter 8. Cartes-de-visite continued to be produced until the early years of the twentieth century but their popularity was reducing from the late 1860s onwards when a new, larger size was introduced. This was the cabinet photograph and it measured about 5½ × 4 inches (14 × 10 cm). Cabinet photographs soon won the public’s approval and were, in effect, a larger version of the carte-de-visite (Figure 4.13). In status-conscious Victorian society, bigger was definitely better. By virtue of the larger size portraits of greater detail were possible and the format was more suitable for group portraits. Cartesde-visite often had useful information about the photographer on the back including the address of the studio (which can help with dating) and this was

Figure 4.13 Horsburgh.

Comparison of the size of cabinet and carte-de-visite prints by John

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the case with cabinet prints but their larger size meant that they could be quite elaborately decorated. On the back were often shown the medals the photographer had won at exhibitions, and as these are often dated they can provide useful information. To appear even more impressive, both sides of the medals were usually shown (Figure 4.14). John Fergus of Largs, whose studio was described earlier, produced cabinet portraits of a very high standard (Figure 4.15) and could charge high prices. It was reported: Mr Fergus charges for cabinet portraits are a guinea for a proof copy, and half a crown for every subsequent print. For cartes, a charge of eighteen shillings per dozen is made; and for the Imperial portrait, in size about twice as big as the cabinet, the proof copy is charged £3. 3s, and every subsequent print five shillings.13

Fergus was based in Largs but he was successful enough to set up another studio in Cannes. Holidays were an obvious time to have photographs taken and many studios were set up in popular areas in Scotland, particularly around the Clyde coast, producing both cabinets and cartes-de-visite, sometimes in appropriate studio settings. Although cartes-de-visite had been used for groups, the larger size of the

Figure 4.14 Back of a Marshall Wane print showing medals won, 1880s.

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Figure 4.15

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Unknown Woman, cabinet print, John Fergus, c. 1880.

cabinet was better suited to this purpose and photographs of school classes became popular. Royalty and personalities were also subjects for cabinet prints but there were other surprising subjects in an age when the ethos of self-improvement was prevalent. Pieces of machinery and scientific material were included in photographs. As already mentioned pornography became the subject of photography but it was not the only type of criminality. There was the celebrated case of the Glasgow photographer John Henry Greatrex who in May 1867 was sentenced to twenty-one years imprisonment for using photography to forge banknotes.14 Once in prison photography would have been used for a mug-shot of the criminal. The collecting of cartes-de-visite and cabinet prints gave rise to another industry, the production of albums to keep them in. As the cards were of a standard size, this facilitated the production of albums for the format. Albums could be in a variety of forms although they were most commonly covered in embossed leather with a metal clip but covers could also include velvet, carved wood, brass, silver, ivory and mother of pearl. There were also musical albums. The pages could be colourfully and elaborately decorated and directed at a specifically Scottish market (Figure 4.16). It was a social activity to show albums and their appearance was very important for the social status of the class-conscious Victorians. There were separate

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Figure 4.16

Album, with decoration on a Scottish theme.

albums for only cartes-de-visite and cabinet prints but albums which could accommodate both sizes were most popular. There were even specially made devices like forceps to slide the cards in and out of slots on the album pages. The Victorians not only put photographs in albums, they also put them in a wide variety of jewellery – brooches, pendants, pins, lockets – in a range of sizes (Figure 4.17). Often on the reverse side of the photograph were locks of hair, which could be woven in a pattern, and sometimes signified a lost loved one. It was not only photographic prints that were used for jewellery but also collodion positives and daguerreotypes. It is difficult to comprehend the full extent of what photography meant to the Victorians. They did have a fascination with anything new and photography had that appeal for them. There was a visual culture of owning likenesses but this had been restricted to those who could afford to have portraits or miniatures painted. Photography, and the improvements of the wet collodion process with the albumen print, put portraiture within the reach of a vastly greater number of people. This was also the first major consumer society and photography, in its various forms, was a commodity in demand. But the appeal of photography was even wider and although there were a growing number of amateurs who wanted to own cameras and make their own photographs, there were other photography-related activities that did

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Figure 4.17

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Jewellery with photographs.

not require any specific technical knowledge. Exhibitions of photographs aroused significant public interest with large numbers attending, as did lectures illustrated with lantern slide photographs. One of the principal purposes of the Photographic Society of Scotland, which was founded in 1856, was to hold exhibitions. It was a very prestigious organisation with Sir David Brewster as President. Its membership included members of the nobility, established artists, like D. O. Hill, prominent lawyers and doctors, professional and amateur photographers and several women. The first exhibition was in 1856 and 1,050 photographs by both professionals and amateurs were shown. For commercial photographers exhibitions could provide a marketing opportunity to display the quality of their work. But there was not an easy relationship between amateur and professional photographers and friction developed, as will be seen in Chapter 8. The first exhibition attracted about 8,000 visitors and charges varied from 1 shilling during the day, 6d for the evening and 2/6d for a season ticket. The first exhibition, like subsequent exhibitions, was widely reported in the press. As well as being of public interest, these exhibtions helped to spread awareness of different techniques and approaches to photography especially as photographers from outside Scotland exhibited. The Photographic Society of Scotland was Edinburgh-based and it began to decline with the establishment in 1861 of the Edinburgh Photographic Society, which is still active today. There had been a Glasgow Photographic Society since 1854 and at its inaugural meeting on 8 March that year, ‘Sheriff Bell stated in an “animated address” that a great many towns “of inferior

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note to Glasgow” had such an association and it was high time that Glasgow had one too.’15 Glasgow was perhaps conscious of its status as the second city of the Empire. It is reckoned to be the first formally constituted society in Scotland, although it was pre-dated by the loosely organised Edinburgh Calotype Club, and the seventh in the world. The Edinburgh Photographic Society, like the Photographic Society of Scotland, held annual exhibitions but also wanted to make photography more accessible to the amateur of moderate means. It encouraged women, by allowing them to join without paying the initial five shillings entry fee, although they still had to pay the annual subscription of five shillings – the Photographic Society of Scotland’s annual subscription was one guinea. The various Societies had regular meetings with speakers giving talks on a wide range of subjects and demonstrating processes. This again enhanced the exchange of skills and expertise and was further assisted by these talks being reported in detail along with other subjects in an increasing number of photographic periodicals. During Victorian times photography was to become increasingly popular. It was a commodity in demand in its various forms, although portraiture remained the most important. It was established as a leisure activity for both men and women that increased in popularity as the end of the century approached. It was also a cultural activity with exhibitions and talks held frequently in towns and cities throughout Scotland attracting large audiences and being widely reported in the press. Photography quickly became an integral part of the Victorian way of life. Lady Eastlake summed it up very well when she wrote: photography has become a household word and a household want; it is used alike by art and science, by love, business and justice; is found in the most sumptuous saloon, and in the dingiest attic – in the solitude of the Highland cottage, and in the glare of the London gin-palace – in the pocket of the detective, in the cell of the convict, in the folio of the painter and architect, among the papers and patterns of the mill-owner and manufacturer, and on the cold brave breast on the battlefield.16

Notes 1. Sir David Brewster, The Stereoscope, Its History, Theory and Construction, John Camden Hotten, second edition, 1870, pp. 36–7. 2. The Falkirk Herald, 5 October 1867. 3. Roger Taylor, George Washington Wilson, Artist and Photographer 1823–93, Aberdeen University Press, 1981, p. 111. 4. H. Baden, Studios in Europe, London, 1882, pp. 183–7. Reproduced in Scottish Photography Bulletin, 2/1992, pp. 32–4. 5. Available at www.edinphoto.org.uk/3/3_pss_exhibitions_7th_mar_1863.htm (last accessed November 2007).

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6. Magnus Jackson, ‘Photography Outside the Studio’, The British Journal of Photography, 4 February 1881. See Susan Payne and Paul Adair, ‘Magnus Jackson and the Black Art: the happy marriage of old and new technology’, Studies in Photography 2008, pp 42–50. 7. Helen Smailes, Kenneth MacLeay, 1802–1878, Scottish Masters 16, National Galleries of Scotland, 1992, p. 10. 8. Roddy Simpson, ‘Orphan Photographs’, The Scots Magazine, February 2010, pp. 90–2. 9. John Hannavy (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, Routledge, Vol. 2, p. 1381. 10. Audrey Linkman, The Victorian Photographic Portraits, Tauris Parke Books, 1993, p. 93. 11. Roger Taylor, George Washington Wilson, Artist and Photographer, 1823–93, Aberdeen University Press, 1981, p. 42. 12. Raymond Lamont-Brown, John Brown: Queen Victoria’s Highland Servant, Sutton Publishing, 2000, caption to photograph, page not numbered. 13. H. Baden, Studios in Europe, London, 1882, pp. 183–7. Reproduced in Scottish Photography Bulletin, 2/1992, pp. 32–4. 14. Sara Stevenson, ‘The Doctor, The Lady and The Man who Printed his own Money’, Studies in Photography 2007, pp. 12–18. 15. William Buchanan, ‘Photography comes to Glasgow’, Scottish Photography Bulletin, Spring 1988, pp. 13–14. 16. Lady Eastlake, Quarterly Review, London, April 1857, pp. 442–68. Reprinted in Photography: Essays and Images, Beaumont Newhall (ed.), Secker & Warburg, p. 81.

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Chapter 5 Scots Abroad: The Achievements of Scottish Photographers Around the World

The outstanding enterprise, endeavour and ability of Scottish photographers finds graphic demonstration in the achievements of those who worked outside of Scotland. It is a trend in Scottish history, which continues, that Scotland has exported throughout the world individuals of talent and expertise who have enjoyed success and recognition in their chosen profession. In the Victorian period this was the case with a rich abundance of exceptional Scottish photographers. They made their mark wherever they went, achieving notable firsts and leading where others would follow. The most prominent was John Thomson who gained an international reputation and created pioneering images in the Far East, England and Cyprus. There was William Carrick in Russia, Robert Macpherson in Italy and several Scots working in India. In the USA there was Alexander Gardner and William Notman in Canada. There were others in China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Africa. There were in fact too many Scottish photographers working abroad to include them all in this chapter. Another aspect of photographic involvement abroad was the increasing number of Scottish tourists, who travelled widely and collected photographs by local photographers of the places they visited. The status and prestige of Scottish photographers can be encapsulated in two photographs. One is of Abraham Lincoln, President of the Union in the American Civil War, shortly before his assassination. It is a powerful image, showing in his gaunt lined face the toll the war had taken. The other is Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States, shown with his wife in a sumptuous and dignified studio portrait. Both photographs are the work of Scottish photographers, but different photographers, who were both born in Paisley. President Abraham Lincoln (Figure 5.1) was photographed by Alexander Gardner in the USA and Jefferson Davis and his wife, Montreal (Figure 5.2) was photographed by William Notman in Canada, where Davis was in exile. Both photographers will be looked at in more detail later. But the breadth of this topic is such that it overflows into other chapters and photographers from Scotland were making images on their travels from the very earliest period of photography. The work of John Muir Wood who photographed widely on continental Europe has already been described. He

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Figure 5.1 President Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Gardner, 1865.

Figure 5.2 Jefferson Davis and wife, Montreal, 1867, William Notman.

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had photographed in Belgium in 1847 but he may not have been the first Scot to photograph there. Sheriff George Moir of the Edinburgh Calotype Club has undated photographs of Ghent and the Edinburgh Calotype Club was active from about 1841. There are also photographs of Italy and Malta from around 1846–47 by other members of the Edinburgh Calotype Club, Sir James Dunlop and Rev. James Calder Macphail. As well as a remarkable photograph taken in Australia by Robert Tennent, Kitchen Hut Gnarkeet Station, Port Phillip (Figure 3.6). One of the first Scottish photographers abroad, as already mentioned, was George Skene Keith, who was the brother of Thomas Keith and like his brother was also a doctor. George was a keen amateur daguerreotypist and made daguerreotypes in Palestine and Syria in 1844 that were used to make engravings and were published in a book, Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion, by his father, Alexander Keith. Perhaps even earlier was Sir David Brewster’s youngest son, Henry, who was an army officer, and had learned the calotype process when on leave in St Andrews. Afterwards he made images in Ireland where he was serving, possibly as early as 1842. John Thomson (1837–1921), for several different reasons was the most significant Scottish photographer working abroad and is internationally important. He was born in Edinburgh to a family of modest means, his father being a tobacconist, but he appears to have recieved a good education, possibly initially at Bathgate Academy, West Lothian, through a family connection.1 His mother’s name was Newlands and it was John Newlands who bequeathed his fortune to found Bathgate Academy. By 1851 he had become apprenticed to an optician and scientific instrument maker but he continued his education and may have attended classes at the University of Edinburgh. In the early 1860s Thomson moved to Singapore to join his brother who had set up business as a watchmaker there. By June 1862 Thomson was advertising his services as a photographer. Little is known about Thomson’s early photographic background but he would certainly have moved in circles in Edinburgh where instruction and guidance would not have been hard to find, especially given his profession. He was also a member of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts where there were discussions and demonstrations of photography. By 1865 Thomson had established both a settled base in Singapore and an active portrait studio providing photographic services to a growing western community in the colony. He was also operating a scientific instrument making business in partnership with his brother. It was from this base that he decided to embark on the first of his major photographic expeditions, which were to establish his reputation. This expedition was to Siam, now Thailand, and Cambodia. He returned to Britain in 1866 to publish his Cambodian photographs. In November that year his photographs were included in the Edinburgh Photographic Society exhibition, which attracted

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large crowds. Thomson’s subsequent expeditions included major journeys in China as well as to Vietnam and Formosa, now Taiwan. He returned permanently to Britain in 1872 and produced a number of publications illustrated with his photographs. He was a ‘perceptive and able writer who, perhaps more than any of his contemporaries, successfully realised the marriage of text and photographs in the production of illustrated travel books.’2 Thomson was awarded the fellowship of the Royal Geographical Society and remained actively involved throughout his life, especially instructing other explorers in photography. Thomson produced images of a range of subjects with an unerring eye for composition and context. His first experience of the past civilisations of the East was in the jungles of Cambodia and in Prea Sat Ling Poun (Figure 5.3) he reveals an intricately designed tower at the centre of Angkor Thom almost consumed by jungle with the face of the Buddha on each side. As he wrote extensively, often his own words about his photographs can be found. An image that typified Thomson’s approach is Bronze Temple, Wan-Show-Shan, Peking (Figure 5.4), about which he wrote: the picture was taken with the instrument facing the sun, or against the light, in order thus to obtain for the temple a bold and clear outline, and at the same time

Figure 5.3 Prea Sat Ling Poun, John Thomson, 1865.

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Figure 5.4 Bronze Temple, Wan-Show-Shan, Peking, John Thomson, 1871–2. to give a soft, and unobtrusive pencilling to the objects in the distant landscape, and by that means heighten the pictorial effect.3

Thomson always chose his viewpoint carefully and here he wanted to focus on the Temple and the clutter of detail given by the rubble around the base and the cumulative effects of years of nature overgrowing the entire structure. Thomson is not making a photographic record of a ruined building, he is creating mood and atmosphere. Although Thomson thought it was ‘a very perfect example of Chinese temple architecture’ it shows the ravages of time and nature while preserving an idea of what it once was. It is said Thomson was ‘capitalising on the power of ruins and the effects of nature on them to engender feelings of melancholy, and to highlight the transience of human achievement in the face of nature’.4 Thomson was certainly prepared to experiment with viewpoints and this is shown in Upper Bridge, Foochow. There is the throng and bustle of people on the bridge above and the view below of the river features numerous boats. This image does not follow pictorial conventions but it works by giving an impression and feeling of place. Thomson had to overcome immense practical problems on his photographic expeditions, often being the first photographer to visit a place. His

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equipment needed up to ten bearers to be transported and these could be untrustworthy and very difficult to manage and the people in the places he visited were suspicious or even hostile to foreigners. On at least one occasion he had to escape an attack from an angry crowd. The wet collodion process which he used was demanding in its chemistry, and as it was practically unknown where he was travelling, he had to prepare chemicals from raw materials. The process necessitated the glass plate negatives being prepared and developed on the spot and this meant working with noxious chemicals in the confines of a portable dark-tent with little ventilation, which could be particularly unpleasant when the temperature and humidity were high. Thomson commented ‘I have felt, after a day’s work in a tent so thoroughly saturated with chemicals that I might almost be used for coating a plate or printing upon’.5 He was also very particular about his camera, which he said: must be strongly made, and the wood the driest, so as not to warp in the hottest sun. It should be portable, and of the ‘Kinnear’ form. I may state here that I have had such bellows camera in use for about two years, during which time I have carried it with me on my travels through jungle, swamp, and forest, and still, though battered and worn, it is a serviceable instrument. The bellows have never suffered from damp, or the attack of white ants, or insects of any description.6

There is a superb photograph by Thomson called simply A Canton Junk (Figure 5.5). He is known to have collected early Chinese scroll paintings and there is almost that quality of design here but captured photographically. The scene goes beyond the picturesque. He is seeing the image in relation to the culture it exists in and not exclusively adopting western perceptions. His interest in the relationship between man and nature is shown in many of his photographs and again this was an important part of Chinese art, derived from the philosophical beliefs of Confucianism and Taoism.

Figure 5.5 A Canton Junk, John Thomson, 1868–71.

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John Hannavy, who has retraced Thomson’s expeditions in China and elsewhere, says: Despite the fact that his photography is firmly rooted in the western Victorian aesthetic, Thomson probably approached China with a completely open mind. He did not know what to expect, and responded spontaneously to what he found. That gives his work a freshness and a documentary value untypical of the era.7

Thomson on his travels photographed many individuals. These could be formal portraits of local dignitaries but unusually he also photographed the lowest in society. Beggars, Foochow (Figure 5.6) is a particularly harrowing image especially when accompanied by Thomson’s commentary. The building that these beggars lived in was built for coffins of the dead to lie and ‘moulder into dust’. These tombs, says Thomson, ‘are invaded by the poor outcasts, who there seek shelter from the cold and rain, creeping gladly to slumber in the dark corners of a sepulchre’.8 It was important for Thomson to photograph all sections of society because he aspired to make as complete a photographic record ‘ever made of any people’.9 In this, the degree to which he succeeded, was widely acknowledged. It was particularly innovative of Thomson to faithfully depict the very poorest in society but it was an experience he was to utilise in his next major project, which was to further enhance his reputation.

Figure 5.6

Beggars, Foochow, John Thomson, 1871.

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During 1876 and 1877 Thomson travelled around the streets of London with the journalist Adolphe Smith. He made a group of thirty-six images, which were published in serial form as Street Life in London. Each photograph was accompanied by descriptive text, usually written by Smith but sometimes by Thomson. It is stated by Richard Ovenden that ‘to combine photographs of the London streets and to place the poor, the working classes, criminals and the homeless at the centre of the images, was a new departure in the photographic documentation of the social topography of London’.10 Thomson produced a series of dramatic social observations and his intent was made clear in the preface, which claimed that by: bringing to bear the precision of photography in illustrating our subject the unquestionable accuracy will enable us to present true types of the London poor and shield us from the accusation of either underrating or exaggerating individual peculiarities of appearance’.11

With technological advances Thomson used dry plates, which enabled him to travel without the encumbrances of tents, baths and chemicals associated with the wet collodion process. This would have made it easier for him to adapt to the conditions he found on the street. However, the photographs were still staged and the exposure times were several seconds. The technology of photography in 1876 would not have allowed the sort of unobtrusive, discreet observation shown in photojournalism from the 1920s onwards. Thomson would have used a tripod-based camera. Because the images were staged there was some criticism of the claim of ‘unquestionable accuracy’. It was difficult to achieve spontaneity and there was the occasional appearance of figures in the background staring at the camera. But despite the technical limitations, Thomson does manage to get a great deal of informality and relaxation into his photographs and sometimes even the appearance of the capture of an unguarded moment. Recruiting Sergeants at Westminster (Figure 5.7) is one of his more imposing images but even here there are two men in the background looking at the photographer. In addition to his photographic skills, Thomson would have had to employ other talents such as crowd control, choreography and persuasion, while ignoring the noisy bustle of the street. He succeeded remarkably well and in Recruiting Sergeants Thomson used contra jour technique, photographing into the light, which adds drama and interest. Contra jour also adds a sinister, even threatening, element to the swaggering soldiers, who were there to lure the unwary to enlist, no doubt after a drink in the public house outside which the sergeants stand, without any awareness of the grim realities of military life at the time. Thomson also deals with his subjects with sympathy and respect. London Nomades (Figure 5.8) shows a caravan with six travelling people. It is a relaxed image and Thomson has put his subjects at ease, although one of the

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Figure 5.7 Recruiting Sergeants at Westminster, John Thomson, 1876–7.

Figure 5.8

London Nomades, John Thomson, 1876–7.

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children in the caravan has not managed to stay still during the exposure. Thomson wrote the commentary to accompany this photograph. The principal character is William Hampton and Thomson reveals his high opinion of him, describing him as ‘a man of fair intelligence and good natural ability’. Thomson goes on to reveal how suddenly tragedy can strike as his commentary states that ‘the old woman at the centre of the image, Mary Pradd, was murdered a month after the photograph was made’.12 Thomson’s most moving photograph is titled The Crawlers (Figure 5.9) and it powerfully depicts the circumstances of the subject, as Crawlers were described as ‘old women reduced by vice and poverty to the degree of wretchedness which destroys even the energy to beg’.13 By getting very close to, and on a level with, the subject, Thomson has made an image which very clearly conveys the misery and hopelessness of urban poverty. Street Life in London sought from the outset to raise awareness of social conditions, not as a polemic or to arouse pity, and this is why it succeeded as the first real social documentary photography. The scenes were familiar but by the use of photography the experiences of the poor were transported into the homes of the comfortable middle classes, and they were made aware of ‘a different, harsher reality’.14 In publishing Street Life in London Thomson took advantage of advances in

Figure 5.9 The Crawlers, John Thomson, 1876–7.

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printing for mechanically reproducing photographs and used the Woodbury process, which produced images that were difficult to differentiate from actual photographs. Tom Hopkinson, who was editor of Picture Post from 1940 to 1950 described John Thomson’s ‘beautiful Woodburytypes’ used to illustrate Street Life in London as ‘a landmark both in photography and social history’.15 Thomson’s last major photographic expedition was to Cyprus in 1878. In that year there was a treaty with Turkey which gave Great Britain control of Cyprus. Thomson was the first British photographer to be given the opportunity to survey the Empire’s newest acquisition. It has been suggested that Thomson was also motivated to make images of Cyprus before the influence of the British Empire had been felt. Thomson made significant images capturing both the atmosphere of places and the appearance of people, and these images were published the following year. Cyprus marked the end of Thomson’s photographic travels. He settled in London and concentrated on studio and society photography, moving to fashionable Mayfair. He was awarded the Royal Warrant in 1881 and had a very prosperous business. However Thomson retained an interest in his early travel photography, which he re-published. Richard Ovenden concludes that Thomson was ‘a richly talented photographer actively interested in a number of photographic and artistic genres. It is perhaps this versatility which marks John Thomson out as a truly great photographer’.16 If Thomson was able to demonstrate his photographic talent in various countries others tended to concentrate on one. William Carrick (1827–78), who was born in Edinburgh on Hogmanay 1827, spent most of his life in Russia. This was because of his father’s involvement in a family timber business based in St Petersburg. William Carrick entered the St Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1844 to study architecture. However, he was not particularly interested in architecture and tried out a number of other subjects before spending most of his time working in watercolour and especially portraits. The wealth of his family allowed him to spend three years in Rome where he worked mostly in watercolour but also had his first introduction to photography. When Carrick returned to St Petersburg he announced his intention to pursue a career in photography. This may in part have been due to his thinking that photography would be more profitable than painting and money had become a consideration as the family timber business, and the trade between Britain and Russia, had suffered due to the Crimean War. Carrick returned to Edinburgh and trained with the established photographer, James Good Tunny. It was during this time that he met the young professional photographer John MacGregor who was to become his assistant. Carrick opened his studio in St Petersburg in 1859 but business conditions were difficult. As well as competition from other photographers, Russia lacked a middle class, the mainstay of British photographers, and

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buying materials was exceptionally expensive. Also, St Petersburg was not particularly sunny, which was a problem when the illumination for taking and printing photographs was sunlight. However, Carrick made the best of the situation and as customers were not clamouring to his studio he found his own subjects and pursued his own interests. These were to be what he called his ‘Russian Types’. Carrick went out and brought back to his studio people he found on the street, from hawkers and peddlers to craftsmen and artisans, to soldiers and even wandering rogues. With the ‘Russian Types’ Carrick’s aim was to give a visual account of the rich and varied life around him. The designation ‘types’ did not carry any patronising or derogatory intent. It was a generalisation and a means of comprehending the universal from the particular. Carrick’s types were intended principally for the tourist market and sold as cartes-de-visite, although they were also purchased by the Russian aristocracy. However, business was not Carrick’s main consideration and he was referred to as being ‘uncommercially minded’. In his photograph Fishmonger the viewer is in no doubt about the sitter’s occupation as the tail of a fish hangs over the side of a basket. In another type, Abacus Seller (Figure 5.10), although it is in the studio, Carrick manages to get a feeling of vitality, even movement. Considering that the subjects

Figure 5.10 Abacus Seller, William Carrick, 1860s.

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would be unaccustomed to photographic equipment and even expressed alarm at the process, Carrick must have had the ability to reassure them. The people in the photographs generally appear confident and relaxed before the camera and Carrick brings out characterisation and even individuality. This may have had something to do with Carrick’s personality, perhaps in the same way as D. O. Hill. It was said of one of Carrick’s visits to photograph in the countryside that ‘there cannot be a Mordavian, however cowed and humbled by fate, who appeared on one of his photographs, who would not even today, grin when remembering him’.17 Carrick took his camera away from the studio and into the countryside and made a series of images depicting the life of the Russian peasant. It was a harsh existence for the peasant but this is not what Carrick dwelt upon, instead showing the peasant as resilient, resourceful and proud. Carrick’s vision was essentially a romantic one, which could be compared to that of the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, who saw the Russian peasant as inherently noble, deriving virtue from labour. The Sower (Figure 5.11) typifies this photographic approach. The image is posed but retains the feel of the action of scattering seeds. In the composition the figure fills the picture and this, with the viewpoint, gives the subject a sort of heroic monumentality.

Figure 5.11

The Sower, William Carrick, 1860s.

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Carrick’s training as an artist obviously contributed to his ability to compose pictures but he could conceive and also respond visually in a photographic way of seeing, which was an important element in the success of his photographs. Carrick’s assistant and friend, John MacGregor, died suddenly in 1872 and in some ways, similar to Hill and Adamson, Carrick at first felt unable to continue but he did with another assistant who had been trained by MacGregor. Carrick died in 1878. At his death it was said of his photography that ‘he loved his art for its own sake, and regarded it not as a means, but as an object of his life’.18 Another painter who turned to photography was Robert Macpherson (1814–72) and he may have met Carrick for he was based in Rome. But it is for his photographs of Roman architecture rather than of people that Macpherson is best known. These were made in and around Rome in the 1850s and 1860s. Macpherson was born in Forfarshire and studied medicine at Edinburgh before leaving for Rome to become a landscape painter. He did not begin photography until 1852 but the extent of his achievement can be judged by the photo-historian Helmet Gernsheim claiming that Macpherson was ‘the finest architectural photographer of the nineteenth century’.19 There is no doubt that within the context of early Scottish photography his work is outstanding, with a tangible sense and feeling for his adopted home and its distinctive portrayal. There is much originality in Macpherson’s photographs, described as ‘poetic descriptions, not mere transcriptions, of the classical scene [which] emphasised in a striking way the mouldering grandeur of these Roman ruins’.20 His inventiveness was perhaps surprising as he was a commercial photographer who had to earn a living. It is therefore understandable that a proportion of his compositions are conventional in nature and similar in viewpoint to the work of earlier artists, which were reproduced as engravings, also for sale to tourists. A viewpoint that is very much his own is The Temple of Minerva, Rome (Figure 5.12). Macpherson’s photographs develop from the idea of Rome as ‘a subject for contemplation’21 and ‘showing the great empire fallen into decay’.22 There is the presence of once noble architecture here but it has lost its splendour and is now used for a mundane purpose. Two doorways have been built into the former temple and one has a sign offering items for sale. The handcart adds piquancy to the contrast between the present and the past. Macpherson’s approach was not purely topographical and ‘presenting accurately or mathematically the surface or the structure of buildings’.23 His work was concerned with a different kind of truth. Here Macpherson concentrates on the surface and the effect that the passing of time has had, creating an awareness of, even a feeling of, time. But Macpherson could also open out vistas in his images and these photographs are more directly related to his artistic training – with a more painterly approach, using the aesthetic conventions of the picturesque – as was

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Figure 5.12

The Temple of Minerva, Rome, Robert Macpherson, c. 1863.

Figure 5.13

General View of Gubbio, Robert Macpherson, 1860s.

apparent in his landscape compositions. In General View of Gubbio (Figure 5.13) the town is placed in the middle distance with the rugged hills behind, a pastoral landscape in the foreground, and a road leading through to the town.

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But it is in his architectural and townscape subjects that his distinctive and photographic approach is most apparent. This is the case with View of Rome from Monte Pinicio, which has a feeling of space, where the viewer is invited to meander into the scene. Sometimes such innovative compositions were described at the time as Macpherson’s ‘eccentric’ images. Here he has moved beyond the conventional formula of the picturesque towards an aesthetic which is much more decisively photographic in character. It might well have been in accord with Macpherson’s personality to produce what were described as ‘eccentric’ photographs because he was a bit eccentric himself. He had a flaming red beard and a penchant for disporting himself in the streets of Rome in his kilt! Another Scot who excelled in architectural photography was John Murray (1809–98). He was a farmer’s son from near Aberdeen who studied medicine before spending most of his life working in India. Murray produced subtle and monumental images of India using the waxed paper process to produce negatives 15 × 18 inches (38 × 46 cm). But in comparison to Macpherson these photographs are much more topographical, with a meticulous recording of detail. Yet there is a sensitivity to the subjects and there are some stunning images, especially Panorama of the West Face of the Taj Mahal. This was made up of three prints and does justice to the grandeur and beauty of the building. His photography was about much more that just recording and he showed compositional awareness not only in celebrating buildings but in providing context and scale. Murray was not the only doctor to photograph in India and not even the first. John McCosh (1805–85), showing commendable pioneering zeal, was producing images from 1843 using the calotype process. McCosh’s work mainly takes the form of portraits. These photographs do not have significant aesthetic quality but show the desire to document likenesses. Given the circumstances, these images are a considerable achievement and, regardless of artistic merit, are historically very important. McCosh’s career as a photographer was fairly brief, continuing until the early 1850s. Another Scot, this time a professional photographer, to work in India was Frederick Bremner (1863–1941). He was born in north east Scotland and attended Banff Academy until the age of thirteen. He later recalled that ‘it was a happy day when I left school . . . and was told by my father that I was not going back as he wished me to help at his own work which was photography’.24 Bremner was well trained before moving to India in the early 1880s, first as an assistant and eventually with his own business. Although the majority of his work was of the commercial portraiture type, he also travelled and recorded the people and landscapes of India. He did this with great sympathy and respect for the country and culture and produced some very evocative images, possibly incorporating the influence of Indian art. One of his most remarkable photographs, Street in Srinagar, captures atmosphere and even a sense of drama, with light flooding in and the throng of the street

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scene revealed. A lyrical landscape is View on the Jhelum River with a small boat framed by an outreaching tree. Bremner was inspired by the scene but his interpretation recognised ‘an appropriate “Indian” aesthetic motif’.25 He was intrepid on his travels and visited Afghanistan where he photographed Armed Afghan Tribes, which he published as a picture postcard (Figure 5.14). It is a disconcerting image for a postcard given the continuity of conflict in the area. Bremner returned to Scotland in the 1920s and died in 1941 at his home in Elgin. His obituary stated that his work showed ‘the skill of the true artist’ and that his ‘reputation was second to none throughout India’.26 Scottish photographers left a significant legacy in India but they were making a mark throughout the world. The portrait by Alexander Gardner (1821–72) of President Abraham Lincoln shortly before he was assassinated is important for historical reasons but the image is even more poignant. In the gaunt, drained and lined face and melancholy eyes of Lincoln, the photographer reveals the strain the Civil War had been on Lincoln and the toll that it had taken on his health. Gardner fully understood from first-hand experience the horrors of that war. Gardner was born in Paisley and was an accomplished photographer before he moved with his family to New York in 1856, where he joined Mathew Brady’s photographic business. He moved to run Brady’s Washington business in 1858. Gardner continued to work for Brady at the beginning of the American Civil War but left because of copyright disagreements. Brady maintained that the work of any photographer in his employ was his to copyright in his name. Working for himself, Gardner joined the headquarters

Figure 5.14

Armed Afghan Tribes, Frederick Bremner, c. 1900.

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staff of the Army of the Potomac and followed the Union Army throughout the conflict. He travelled in his wagon, which he used as his portable darkroom, an essential requirement with the wet collodion process. It was his photographs of the Civil War that made Gardner’s reputation and in particular his book The Photographic Sketchbook of the War, which also included the work of other photographers. This was published at the end of the Civil War in two folio volumes, each containing fifty 8 × 10 inch (20 × 25 cm) prints. It has been described as the first photographic essay of a war, with its emotive and disturbing content. Gardner’s photograph of Scouts and Guides to the Army of the Potomac. October 1862 (Figure 5.15) shows a collection of rugged individuals but is also interesting for its compositional aesthetic. Some of Gardner’s war photographs have been attributed to Mathew Brady, who took very few photographs. Research in the USA has re-attributed some Brady images to Gardner. The grounds for this, in the words of the researcher, are because of ‘their particularly elegant compositions . . . or because selective focus has been creatively used to organise the image, control distracting detail and achieve harmonious pictorial effects’ which ‘suggests an eye informed by contemporary British photography’.27 The blurred out background in the Scouts and Guides photograph is indicative of this selective focus. Gardner made some of the most famous and powerful Civil War images

Figure 5.15

Scouts and Guides to the Army of the Potomac. October 1862.

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and Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter, Gettysburg, July 1863 (Figure 5.16) is one of Gardner’s most well known. However, this photograph has given rise to some controversy as it is now known that Gardner fabricated it. He moved the body of an ordinary Confederate infantryman into position, turning the head to face the camera and propped the rifle, which is not of the type used by a sharpshooter, against the wall to complete the composition. Gardner wrote a patriotic commentary to accompany the photograph in The Photographic Sketchbook of the War and there is no doubt that he intended it to be an emotive image because, as William F. Stapp writes: By self-consciously turning the body’s face to the camera he created an image with a powerful, sentimental impact. The face is young, handsome and unquestionably recognisable. It is an ordinary face that seems familiar, and precisely because of that, it functions so effectively to universalise the transcended meaning of this photograph, that the tragedy of this boy’s death touches us all, as does the tragedy of any soldier’s death in any war.28

There is a paradox here, ‘because it does not tell a literal truth but is capable of expressing a greater universal one’ and ‘out of this horrific subject matter Gardner makes not only a tragic, elegiac photograph but also a beautiful one’.29 Gardner travelled widely after the Civil War on a variety of photographic

Figure 5.16

Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter, Gettysburg, July 1863.

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activities including photographing Native Americans and being official photographer to the Union Pacific Railway. He devoted the last years of his life to philanthropic work, dying in Washington. Another photographer born in Paisley who rose to prominence in North America was William Notman (1826–91) and, with the involvement of succeeding generations of his family, he established something of a dynasty. Notman was well educated, particularly in drawing and painting and toyed with the idea of becoming a professional artist but entered the family firm of cloth wholesaling in Glasgow. Because of a market downturn in the mid 1850s, the family firm experienced business problems. Notman, in an attempt to help the business, undertook some reckless commercial practices, which when detected by suppliers were considered fraudulent. To avoid repercussions he made a hurried departure for Canada in the summer of 1856, settling in Montreal. Notman was an accomplished amateur photographer when he arrived in Canada and he discovered that there were few photographers practising in Montreal and saw this as a business opportunity. By first undertaking other work he was able to finance the opening of a small portrait studio by the end of 1856. Notman’s business prospered and he was able to move to a much larger, elegant and prominent building. Studio work was to be the mainstay of Notman’s photographic empire, eventually building up a network of branches throughout eastern Canada and the north-east USA. All of Notman’s branch studios concentrated on a house style of portrait work which relied on the conventions of European art and was not particularly imaginative. However, he was innovative in certain marketing areas, including studio snow scenes and composite pictures. The latter were made up of individual portraits under such titles as Eminent Women, which consisted of American authors. His studio portrait of the President of the Confederate States, Jefferson Davis, and his wife, falls into the conventional category of portraiture although imbued with elegance and dignity. Notman was capable of getting characterization into his portraits as shown in that of a fellow Scot Sandford Fleming, who was a civil engineer and pioneering engineer-in-chief for the Canadian Pacific Railway, superintending the exploration and surveys for the best route to the Pacific. Notman did work outside the studio very effectively and an early commission came from the Grand Trunk Railway to photograph the construction of the Victoria Bridge, which was the long awaited link between the north and south shores of the St Lawrence River at Montreal. The photographs were mainly for record purposes but Gardner goes beyond this with interesting and pleasing compositions as well as unusual viewpoints. Notman’s outdoor portraiture could also be refreshingly different from the standard studio set-up and a good example is The Stuart Family Picnic, Pullman’s Island, New York, 1872 (Figure 5.17). The island was owned by

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Figure 5.17 The Stuart Family Picnic, Pullman’s Island, New York, 1872, William Notman.

George Pullman of the Pullman Palace Car Company and Notman made a series of photographs of the Pullman family and their friends as well as the house and grounds. The Stuart family are obviously posed but there is a feeling of relaxed informality. Notman also uses selective or differential focus, blurring the foreground and background to concentrate attention on the family. This is enhanced by the natural side-lighting and adds to the hints of dappled sunlight in the wood. It has an atmosphere his studio photographs lack. Notman was a talented photographer but also very much a businessman. At the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876 he introduced, possibly for the first time, the photo-identity card. Large expositions like London and Paris had experienced difficulties with properly identifying employees, exhibitors and others who had to make recurrent trips to the exhibition site. The solution at Philadelphia was what was called the photographic ticket, with a photograph of the holder. Notman was a very wealthy man when he died and the Notman family business continued in Montreal until the 1950s. Mention has already been made of Charles Piazzi Smyth in Chapter 4 and the stereo photographs in his book Tenerife, An Astronomer’s Experiment, or Specialities of a Residence above the Clouds (Figure 4.2) published in 1858. It was an account of an astronomy expedition to Tenerife he led in the summer of 1856 to make viewings above cloud level. Smyth successfully used the

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wet collodion process to produce stereo negatives of all major aspects of the expedition and its findings. It is claimed to be the first book illustrated by stereo-photographs and there were twenty albumen stereo-photographs pasted onto the pages. Two editions of 1,000 copies were published in 1858 and the labour involved in pasting thousands of photographs onto the pages must have been enormous. There is a story, likely to be apocryphal, that this was done by Smyth’s wife, Jessica, although there is a statement that she ‘assisted Piazzi at his photography as in all his other scientific activities’.30 This was not the only example of Smyth’s inventive spirit. In late 1864 he travelled to the Great Pyramid in Egypt. Before he left Edinburgh he designed a miniature camera to meet the needs of the expedition. The negative was only one inch square (2.5 cm) and Smyth used 1 × 3 inch (2.5 × 7.5 cm) microscope slides. In April 1865, in the last week before returning to Scotland, Smyth produced a number of interior photographs of the Pyramid using magnesium as the light source, which was only at the experimental stage. Charles Piazzi Smyth’s photographic work was well summed up as being ‘pioneering in documentation, technical execution and concept’.31 Scottish photographers abroad is a huge topic with ever increasing recognition of their achievements. On 9 September 2006 at the Craighouse campus of Edinburgh Napier University, a memorial was unveiled to William K. Burton (Baruton-Sensei) (1856–99) to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of a Scot who made an astonishing impact on nineteenth-century Japan. In Burton’s short life he established himself as an excellent photographer and influential writer on the subject. An important figure in his early photography was his grandfather Cosmo Innes, one of the members of the Edinburgh Calotype Club and the Photographic Society of Scotland. Burton’s books Modern Photography and Practical Guide to Photography introduced modern approaches and techniques to Japan and ‘there is no doubt that if Burton had not gone to Japan, the development of photography in that country would have been much slower’.32 He founded the Japanese Photographic Society in 1889 and organised Japan’s first International Photographic Exhibition in 1893. Burton was an engineer and had gone to Japan in 1887 as the first Professor of Sanitary Engineering at the Imperial University of Tokyo. He designed new sewage and sanitation systems for Tokyo and many other cities in Japan and Taiwan. Tragically, he was suddenly taken ill, possibly from overwork, and died in Tokyo in 1899 at the age of 43, leaving his Japanese wife and their young daughter. Another Scot in the Far East was John Dudgeon (1837–1901) who was born in Ayrshire and trained as a doctor at Glasgow University before spending most of his working life in Peking. He was a keen photographer and took many important photographs of China and met John Thomson in Peking. Dudgeon published the first comprehensive manual of photography in Chinese in 1873, Tuoying qiguan (How to Take Wonderful Photographs).33 Further east there were Scottish photographers in Australia and New

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Zealand. Daniel Marquis (1830–79), who was from Glasgow, had a photographic studio in Stirling before emigrating to Australia in 1865 and settling in Brisbane. He was one of the first photographers there and did mainly portraits, however he also photographed aboriginals, which was unusual at the time. A collection of his work is in the State Library of Queensland and is described as ‘a most comprehensive collection and houses many things not documented pictorially before’ and Daniel Marquis is ‘regarded as a pioneering figure in the history of Australian photography’.34 George D. Valentine (1852–90) made many fine images in New Zealand. He went there in 1882 in an attempt to improve his fragile health. He was the son of the well-known Scottish landscape photographer James Valentine, who catered for a growing tourist market and will be looked at in more detail in Chapter 6. The quality of the images George Valentine took recording the landscape explains why he is so highly regarded in New Zealand.35 Thomas Jackson was the son of another well-established professional photographer, Magnus Jackson of Perth. Thomas was trained by his father but left Scotland in the 1890s to set up in business in South Africa. He was following other Scots to that continent, possibly most importantly John Kirk (1832–1922), who was a doctor and diplomat and had been awarded a knighthood. Kirk accompanied David Livingstone on his second expedition between 1858 and 1863 and ‘his surviving expedition notes and photographs (among the earliest taken in East Africa) form a unique record of the journey’.36 In 1866 Kirk became British Consul in Zanzibar and during his twenty years there produced a rich series of photographs vividly documenting the people and places of Zanzibar and the adjacent mainland. This chapter is not an exhaustive commentary on the Scottish photographers working outside Scotland during the Victorian era but highlights the principal figures as well as showing the breadth of activity. It was business trips that took Dunfermline linen manufacturer Erskine Beveridge (1851–1920) abroad and as he was a talented amateur photographer he took his camera. He travelled widely and recorded memorable pictures of USA and Canada. As travelling became more popular and convenient an increasing number of Scots were going abroad as tourists and as the majority were not taking their own photographs, they would collect them. These souvenirs would be produced by local photographers in the places visited. Most popular were view scraps, which were prints of differing sizes that could be pasted into albums and provided a record of the trip. There could also be stereo-photographs to give a more vivid experience. An important part of the Victorian tourist experience was to be able to show, or even show-off, to people when they got home the places that had been visited. The demand for photographs from tourists visiting Scotland created opportunities for local photographers and it was George Washington Wilson and James Valentine who were to take the greatest advantage of these opportunities, as will be explained in the next chapter.

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Notes 1. Ialeen Gibson Cowan in re-publication of John Thomson’s, Through Cyprus with the Camera in the Autumn of 1878, Trigraph, 1985, p. ix. 2. John Falconer and Louise Hide, Points of View, Capturing the 19th Century in Photographs, The British Library, 2009, p. 68. 3. Richard Ovenden, John Thomson (1837–1921) Photographer, The Stationery Office, 1997, p. 50. 4. Richard Ovenden, John Thomson (1837–1921) Photographer, The Stationery Office, 1997, p. 50. 5. Richard Ovenden, John Thomson (1837–1921) Photographer, The Stationery Office, 1997, p. 174. 6. British Journal of Photography, August 10, 1866, p. 380. 7. John Hannavy, Great Photographic Journeys: in the Footsteps of 19th Century British Photographers, Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2007, p. 224 8. Stephen White, John Thomson, A Window to the Orient, Thames & Hudson, 1985, p. 22. 9. Stephen White, John Thomson, A Window to the Orient, Thames & Hudson, 1985, p. 17. 10. Richard Ovenden, John Thomson (1837–1921) Photographer, The Stationery Office, 1997, p. 83. 11. John Thomson, Victorian London Street Life in Historic Photographs, facsimile of Street Life in London, Dover Publications, 1994, page not numbered. 12. Richard Ovenden, John Thomson (1837–1921) Photographer, The Stationery Office Limited, 1997, p. 85. 13. John Thomson, Victorian London Street Life in Historic Photographs, facsimile of Street Life in London, Dover Publications, 1994, p. 108 14. Richard Ovenden, John Thomson (1837–1921) Photographer, The Stationery Office, 1997, p. 88. 15. Tom Hopkinson, Treasures of the Royal Photographic Society 1839–1919, Heinemann, 1980, p. 36. 16. Richard Ovenden, John Thomson (1837–1921) Photographer, The Stationery Office, 1997, p. 120. 17. Felicity Ashbee and Julie Lawson, William Carrick, 1827–1878, Scottish Masters 3, National Galleries of Scotland, 1987, p. 10. 18. Felicity Ashbee and Julie Lawson, William Carrick, 1827–1878, Scottish Masters 3, National Galleries of Scotland, 1987, p. 17. 19. Ray McKenzie, ‘The Cradle and Grave of Empires: Robert Macpherson and the Photography of Nineteenth-Century Rome’, The Photographic Collector, Vol. 4, No. 2, Autumn 1983, p. 215. 20. Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, The History of Photography: From the Camera Obscura to the Beginning of the Modern Era, Thames & Hudson, 1969, p. 282. 21. Sara Stevenson et al., Light from the Dark Room, National Galleries of Scotland, 1995, p. 37. 22. Sara Stevenson et al., Light from the Dark Room, National Galleries of Scotland, 1995, p. 37.

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23. Sara Stevenson et al., Light from the Dark Room, National Galleries of Scotland, 1995, p. 37. 24. Julie Lawson, ‘Frederick Bremner: A Vision of India’, Scottish Photography Bulletin, 1/1991, p. 9. 25. Julie Lawson, ‘Frederick Bremner: A Vision of India’, Scottish Photography Bulletin, 1/1991, p. 13. 26. Julie Lawson, ‘Frederick Bremner: A Vision of India’, Scottish Photography Bulletin, 1/1991, p. 11. 27. Brooks Johnson et al., An Enduring Interest: The Photographs of Alexander Gardner, Chrysler Museum, 1991, pp. 22–3. 28. Brooks Johnson et al., An Enduring Interest: The Photographs of Alexander Gardner, Chrysler Museum, 1991, pp. 32–3. 29. Julie Lawson, Review of An Enduring Interest: The Photographs of Alexander Gardner, Scottish Photography Bulletin, No. 1, 1992, p. 31. 30. H. A. and M. T. Bruck, The Peripatetic Astronomer, Adam Higer, 1988, p. 66. 31. Larry J. Schaaf, ‘Charles Piazzi Smyth, Photography and the Disciples of Constable and Harding’, The Photographic Collector, Vol. 4, No. 3, Winter 1983, p. 331. 32. Terry Bennett, Photography in Japan, 1853–1912, Tuttle Publishing, 2006, p. 255. 33. Nick Pearce, Photographs of Peking, China 1861–1908, Edwin Mellen Press, 2005, p. 28. 34. Stirling’s Talking Stones, text by Elma Lindsay, Stirling Council Libraries, 2002, p. 41 35. Ken Hall, George D. Valentine – A 19th-Century Photographer in New Zealand, Craig Potton Publishing, 2004. 36. Iain F. Maciver, ‘The Kirk Papers’, Folio, Collections, Research, Events at the National Library of Scotland, Issue 1, Autumn 2000, p. 2.

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Chapter 6 Tourists and Travellers: Images of Scotland Produced for the Rapidly Growing Tourist Market and Photographs Taken by Visitors Scotland became an increasingly popular tourist destination during the nineteenth century and tourists wanted souvenirs and what better souvenir than a photographic image of the places visited? Creating photographs for the tourist market became a flourishing activity and some photographers excelled, notably George Washington Wilson of Aberdeen and James Valentine of Dundee who formed national and international business enterprises. There were several factors involved in attracting tourists to Scotland but undoubtedly the greatest was Sir Walter Scott. His novels and poetry gave a romantic depiction of Scotland, especially its landscape, and this brought visitors flocking to the localities described. His epic poem The Lady of the Lake, with the action set around Loch Katrine and the Trossachs, put this area on the tourist map. In the Borders Melrose Abbey and Scott’s home at Abbotsford became tourist Meccas, as did the village of Roslin, which featured in The Lay of the Last Minstrel. This was also before developments that increased tourism. The railways were to make travel easier and a network of steamers made the remoter Western Highlands and Islands more accessible. In 1846 Thomas Cook arranged his first package tour to Scotland. Also, Queen Victoria’s annual pilgrimage to Scotland and the building of Balmoral Castle maintained public interest and made Scotland fashionable. On a journey to Iona in 1840, Lord Cockburn, the famous judge, commented: The number of foreign, but chiefly the English, travellers is extraordinary. They fill every conveyance and every inn, attracted by scenery, curiosity, superfluous time and wealth, and the fascination of Scott, while attracted by grouse, the mansion-houses of half of our poor devils of Highland lairds are occupied by rich and titled Southrons.1

This interest in Scotland presented commercial opportunities not least for the new and developing photographic industry and the man who was to take the greatest advantage was George Washington Wilson (1823–93). Washington Wilson was from a humble background, born on a small croft near Banff. His distinctive second name was thought to be a tribute to the former US president because his father had already chosen Benjamin

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Franklin’s surname as a second Christian name for his eldest son Robert. Wilson was educated at the local parish school and became an apprentice carpenter. At the age of twenty-three he decided to pursue a career as an artist and moved to Edinburgh to train as a miniature painter and also spent time in London and Paris. Wilson thought of himself primarily as an artist and this creativity is evident in his photography and it is unlikely that he would have achieved what he did as a photographer without his understanding of artistic principles. By 1852 Wilson had set up business in Aberdeen and was offering his clients the alternative of having a portrait painted or a photograph taken. The timing coincided with the more widespread use of the wet collodion process. He was soon to receive his first Royal commission in 1853 from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to document the building of their new highland home at Balmoral. This was the beginning of a long association with the Queen and further Royal commissions followed. Wilson’s reputation quickly became established, with most of the leading citizens of Aberdeen coming to his studio to be photographed. In 1855 Wilson published A Practical Guide to the Collodion Process in Photography and throughout his career he consistently shared his so called secrets, or the details of his techniques, with others, believing that it was his skill as an artist that set him apart. Wilson’s portrait studio provided a secure cash flow and could be left to be run by managers while Wilson embarked on landscape photography, recognising it as an opportunity for the tourist market. This was an ambitious move as there was very little commercial landscape photography being undertaken anywhere in Britain and it was an entirely new product Wilson was attempting to establish. But to succeed as Wilson did he had to be much more than a business opportunist, he had to be a good photographer and he certainly was. Wilson’s early images were of places associated with Sir Walter Scott and particularly the setting of The Lady of the Lake, Loch Katrine and the Trossachs. These were just the sort of photographs tourists wanted. Ellen’s Isle, Loch Katrine (Figure 6.1) is an archetypical image with Scott associations but the interest in this photograph lies in the composition. Wilson’s initial landscape views were intended for viewing in a stereoscope and he quickly learned that foreground detail was important to enhance and exaggerate the 3-D effect. Wilson’s use of foreground details shows his mastery of arranging pictures within the frame. Darkness in the foreground was part of Wilson’s photographic aesthetic and he employed the technique whenever possible. There is another technical consideration in this composition. The branch and rowan leaves provide detail in what would otherwise be a blocked out, or completely white, sky. Early wet collodion negatives could not cope with the brightness range of a relatively bright blue sky and darker green tones and to expose properly to show detail in the latter meant

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Figure 6.1

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Ellen’s Isle, Loch Katrine, George Washington Wilson, 1860s.

that the sky would be many times over-exposed, blank and uninteresting. Wilson used compositional devices to disguise and minimise this condition. Wilson was technically innovative and was prepared to experiment to see if the sky and the foreground could be captured on the same negative. He was spurred on because of photographs that were appearing in exhibitions. In Chapter 4 it was shown that exhibitions were very popular with the general public and well attended, as well as being widely reported in the press. These exhibitions were not just of public interest but helped to spread awareness amongst photographers themselves of different techniques and approaches to photography. At these exhibitions photographs were displayed that had a detailed sky as well as a properly exposed foreground. However, these were not from a single negative but from what was described as combination printing. A negative of the foreground was combined with a separately but correctly exposed negative for the sky. One of the most celebrated examples of this, River Scene, France, by the French photographer Camille Silvy was first exhibited at the Photographic Society of Scotland in Edinburgh in 18582 and received very favourable reviews. It was another French photographer, Gustav Le Gray, who exhibited two seascapes3 at the Photographic Society of Scotland exhibition in Edinburgh the previous year, who may have been Wilson’s direct impetus to try and capture the sky and land on a single negative because it was thought at the time that the Le Gray images of seascapes were from single negatives. It has subsequently been shown that Le Gray used separate negatives for the sky and the sea. Wilson recognised the commercial potential of having skies successfully rendered in his photographs and started experimenting with the wet collodion process in order to capture the sky and foreground within a single negative. His early attempts were seascapes and these were taken into the

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light. This was because the intensity of light from the sky and the reflection of this light from the sea were more in balance. In 1859 Wilson succeeded with a series of stereo photographs, again featuring water, at Loch of Park, Aberdeenshire (Figure 6.2). Part of his technique was to use a different developer, which gave a less dense black on the negative, and by lining the inside of the brass barrel of his lenses he dramatically reduced specular reflection. When the results were displayed and reviewed in the photographic press, Wilson was firmly established as one of the leading practitioners of the day. From his photographs with water he went on to introduce a subtle gradation in the sky of his landscape images. The same year as Wilson was successful in capturing clouds, he was also successful in shortening exposure times and went on to produce what were called his ‘instantaneous’ photographs. Wilson used a new developer, which enhanced the sensitivity of the negative to such an extent that he was able to reduce his exposure times to around one tenth of a second. There is a famous stereo photograph of Princes Street, Edinburgh (Figure 6.3) where it is said that he achieved this by a rather unusual method. It is claimed that his Glengarry bonnet was the shutter, and that with a flick of the wrist, his bonnet uncovered the lens with sufficient rapidity to still the movement of pedestrians and traffic. The Glengarry story may be apocryphal but at this time there would not have been shutter mechanisms. The exposure technique was to take the cap off the lens and then replace it. At the same time as Wilson was making exposures of around a tenth of a second on Princes Street, William Donaldson Clark, who was mentioned in Chapter 3, was also photographing there and his exposures were several minutes. With these advances, Wilson was showing that he could combine art with science and enhance the aesthetic quality of his work. Wilson’s photograph The Silver Strand, Loch Katrine (Figure 6.4) was for the tourist trade but around the time this image was made if it had been

Figure 6.2

Loch of Park, Aberdeenshire, George Washington Wilson, 1859.

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Figure 6.3

Princes Street, Edinburgh, George Washington Wilson, 1859.

Figure 6.4

The Silver Strand, Loch Katrine, George Washington Wilson, 1860s.

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said to an average tourist that a view was quite ‘Wilsonian’ they would have understood the reference. His photographs had definable aesthetic qualities that were recognisable and he understood the picturesque and composition. Such images might now be described as picture postcard views but Wilson was producing them several decades before there were such things as picture postcards. Wilson’s range of views was extensive and his list of stereoscopic and album views for 1863 amounted to 440, including a proportion south of the border, and more continued to be added including scenes from other

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countries. This coverage, coupled with his network of outlets and almost factory production methods, made a formidable organisation. Wilson also maintained a very high standard in the production of his prints, particularly toning to preserve the image and thorough washing. The photograph George Washington Wilson’s St Swithin Street Printing Works, Aberdeen, (Figure 4.6) was referred to in Chapter 4 and shows the scale of his operation for making prints – the production figure for the year 1864–5 totalled 553,331. It has been calculated ‘there were well over five million stages involved in their production’.4 In 1872 Wilson employed ‘thirty assistants who are constantly occupied in printing, toning, mounting, and filling his numerous orders’.5 As print production was contact printing by daylight, the output was directly related to the weather conditions. This meant that the output of a single negative was limited. When the demand was beyond this limit, Wilson, mindful of profits, had no real alternative but to revisit the area and make a further set of negatives to supplement his existing stock and increase his printing capacity. Duplicate images superseding and updating earlier ones make it difficult to accurately date some Wilson photographs. On his photographic trips Wilson was usually accompanied by his assistant William Gellie, who, on occasion, appears in the photographs along with the dark tent in which they would have had to do all the wet collodion plate preparation and development. Gellie and the tent can be seen in the right-hand foreground in Tay Bridge Dundee, from the South (Figure 6.5). Wilson would have needed an assistant as it would have been quite an undertaking transporting his equipment, especially to remote locations.

Figure 6.5

Tay Bridge Dundee, from the South, George Washington Wilson, 1879.

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It should be mentioned that it was not only in the technical aspects of producing photographs that Wilson was inventive, he also pioneered camera and particularly lens design. Wilson had a close and happy association with J. H. Dallmeyer, the London optician who established a business manufacturing lenses and cameras. Before 1861 Wilson nearly always fitted his camera with a pair of 6-inch view lenses, which gave an approximate 30-degree angle of view. These lenses were fitted with a large 5⁄8 inch aperture for instantaneous views and a 3⁄16 inch aperture for ordinary subjects requiring longer exposure. In early 1861 Dallmeyer supplied to Wilson his Triplet lens which gave a much wider 70-degree angle of view. (A 30-degree angle of view represents about an 80 mm lens for a 35 mm camera and a 70-degree angle of view equals about a 30 mm lens for a 35 mm camera.) Wilson saw the commercial potential of the lens, which was ideally suited for landscape photography. During 1861 he began using it to build up a stock of negatives that would yield large single prints rather than stereo-photographs. Wilson felt that there would come a time when stereo-photographs would decline in popularity and there would be an advantage in having an alternative to offer in sufficient quantity. Wilson was therefore ideally placed to market cabinet views, prints about 6 × 8 inches (15 × 20 cm), and it is claimed that he was also the originator of this format. Cabinet views were also described as view scraps and individual prints were sold to tourists so that they could make up albums of places they had visited. Further sizes of view scraps were introduced. View scraps will be discussed in more detail later. However, stereo photography was still in demand so Wilson had to produce both stereo views and cabinet views. Once again Wilson was to collaborate with Dallmeyer to produce the ‘Wilson’ camera. It could function equally well as a stereoscopic camera or as a single-image camera. This was achieved by removing a pliable central division which separated the two chambers of the stereo camera, converting it into an ordinary camera that could be used with the Triplet lens and its wider angle of view. With the wider angle of view vistas could be opened up to become more panoramic and there was no need for close foreground details or dark side screens to enclose, as with stereo photographs, and Wilson’s compositions evolved to take advantage of this. An early impressive panorama shows Dunnottar Castle (Figure 6.6) in its dramatic coastal setting. This creative use of the wide angle lens was not used exclusively for landscapes – it could be used for towns as well as in innovative compositions such as The Wallace Monument (Figure 6.7), with the reflection of the monument in the still foreground water. It was impossible for Wilson to be the sole company photographer, stamping his individual vision on each view. His sons joined the business and staff photographers were despatched all over Britain and beyond, adding international views, and this was further supplemented by negatives bought

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Figure 6.6

Dunnottar Castle, George Washington Wilson, 1860s.

Figure 6.7

The Wallace Monument, George Washington Wilson, 1870s.

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from local photographers. So every photograph that carries the distinctive ‘GWW’ letters is not necessarily by Wilson himself. Larger and larger catalogues were produced and by the 1880s Wilson could claim over 10,000 views of Scotland alone. The quality of many of these photographs, from a variety of sources, was inconsistent. By the late 1880s Wilson’s health began to fail, which was perhaps inevitable after years of prolonged contact with highly toxic chemicals. After Wilson died in 1893 his sons took over the business but found it difficult to deal with a rapidly changing commercial world and the company was completely wound up in 1908. At the auction of the company’s assets there was little interest in its many negatives and they were disposed of for a pittance. Although there is an interesting aside because a former staff photographer, Fred Hardie, bought 1,143 Australian pictures, which he had probably taken or commissioned himself. So he could have bought back his own work. Fortunately, over 40,000 glass plate negatives from the Wilson business have been preserved and are now in the care of Aberdeen University Library where they are readily accessible. Aberdeen Public Library also has an extensive collection of George Washington Wilson material. George Washington Wilson is important in the history of Scottish photography, particularly for the quality of the work he produced when he was at his best. In this ‘there was a blending of the influences arising from his classical art training and of the special requirements which popular taste and geographical circumstances imposed on his camera vision’.6 Wilson had an artistic understanding that interpreted rather than just represented the subject before the camera and he caught the grandeur and spirit of the place. Wilson freely explained his working methods and there is an informative editorial to articles by him published in the British Journal of Photography in 1864. The Editor writes that people: seem to live in the idea that artists like Mr Wilson must be possessed of some peculiar secret, which they are disinclined to give to others. They fancy their photographs are executed with surprising facility, and not the exercise of great patience and perseverance, not to speak of other qualities; but let them now learn, after carefully perusing these articles, that it is the man, and not the peculiarity of his manipulations, that stamp a character on the works which he can execute . . . Many again, have supposed that artistic photographs of scenery can be produced at any time with ease and certainty. Mr Wilson’s experience tells a different tale. We have known him wait for more than three weeks for the purpose of securing a single view, illuminated in a way which he considered the best for good effect; and all this under circumstances of personal discomfort which few of us would care to undergo . . . Artistic photography, therefore, is not quite as easy a thing as is generally imagined; for it requires not only skilful manipulation – a power which can easily be acquired by practice – but, above all, the operator must possess energy of purpose, patience under difficulties, and a higher quality still, which cannot be

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acquired, although, when present, it may be cultivated, namely, ‘artistic taste and feeling’.7

Wilson’s great rival was James Valentine (1815–79) of Dundee and if Valentine did not achieve the same status as Wilson as a photographer, his family business endured a lot longer. Ellen’s Isle, Loch Katrine (Figure 6.8) by James Valentine is almost identical to the earlier stereo view by George Washington Wilson and much of Valentine’s work appears to have been taken from very similar viewpoints to Wilson. It may not have been the case that Wilson was always first to a location but it was a standing joke within the Wilson family that Valentine’s photographs so closely resembled their father’s it was said that ‘the same tripod holes’8 must have been used to achieve the results! James Valentine was born in Dundee and planned to become a portrait painter and started studying in Edinburgh but had to return to Dundee to work in the family engraving and printing business. He took over the business in the 1840s and it was eventually to become Valentines of Dundee. James Valentine experimented with photography as an amateur and had a particular interest in the daguerreotype process. In around 1850 he went to Paris to study photography and certainly by 1856 he had set himself up as a professional photographic artist in Dundee. In 1858 a circular described the firm’s activities as ‘engravings and lithographic printing for visiting, wedding and business cards, invoice heads, circulars . . . book binding in all various styles . . . picture frames of every description . . . photography in portrait groups and views of Scottish scenes’.9 The last reference is significant

Figure 6.8

Ellen’s Isle, Loch Katrine, James Valentine, 1860s.

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because it shows that by this time Valentine had started making landscape views. These scenes were sold either as single images or as collections in albums. Valentine also produced stereo photographs but he does not appear to have matched the scale of Wilson. James Valentine, like Wilson, was patronised by Queen Victoria who bought a series of his Highland scenes and Valentine was awarded the Royal Warrant. In 1863 William Valentine, the eldest son of James, joined the firm and he specialised in his father’s interest in landscape photography while the younger brother, George, concentrated on portrait work, although as was noted in Chapter 5, George went to New Zealand. It was James Valentine’s son William who built up the photographic print business in Scotland and after training a skilled staff of helpers, widened the scope of the business to include England and the rest of the British Isles, as well as around the world. So the same applies to the initials ‘JV’ on a print as ‘GWW’, in that it could be the work of a number of photographers. The business that developed consisted mainly of what was termed local view scraps. These were photographic prints on albumen paper which could be pasted into an album (Figure 6.9). Tourists would make up their own albums which could be a personalised illustrated itinerary of their trip. The prints

Figure 6.9 Annotated album page with cabinet-size Valentine view scraps of Perth and Dunkeld, 1872.

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were sold mainly in two sizes – Imperial, which was about 8 × 12 inches (20 × 30 cm), and Cabinet, which was about 6 × 8 inches (15 × 20 cm). The Imperial size retailed at 2/- each and the Cabinet at 1/-. Smaller carte-devisite-size view scraps were also available but declined in demand with the popularity of the larger sizes. Like Washington Wilson, Valentine’s scale of production was impressive. In 1882 it was reported that: 40 employees were engaged all year round, with 3,000 prints a day ‘not an unusual number to produce’. Albumen prints were exposed under glass-plate negatives [and] as many as 700 frames could be found on the printing tables. William [Valentine] was credited with being ‘responsible for the negatives’ of views of Scotland, and with having created ‘the most delightful scenes that have ever been taken of that delightful country.’10

The view scraps were bought and collected by tourists and it is strange where photographs eventually end up. In the University of Michigan Museum of Art there is an album of 27 cabinet views by Valentine and Sons, recording a tour of Scotland by a French family in August and September 1869.11 View scraps were widely available from a variety of retailers and especially stationers and chemists (Figure 6.10). The albums that tourists made up themselves could be elaborate, including decoration, details of places visited, and dates. Valentine, like Wilson, produced albums (Figure 6.11) of photographs for various tourist resorts and localities that had large sales and saved tourists

Figure 6.10 High Street, Wigtown, James Valentine, 1880s, showing shop with photograph view scraps for sale.

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Figure 6.11

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Title page of Valentine Album.

the trouble of making up their own albums. Those by Valentine ranged in price from 2 to 5 guineas (£2. 2/- to £5. 5/-) and could be lavish. These were expensive when compared to the pay of Valentine’s employees. The highest wage would be ‘a maximum of £3 a week for managers, £2.10/- for photographic operators and Travellers to 8/- to 12/- for female staff’.12 The latter would be well below subsistence level and would have to be an additional income to a household. In the latter period of the 1890s the annual turnover for the firm was in the region of £30,000. Local view scraps could be described as the postcards of the time and it was Valentine’s ability to respond to new methods of reproducing photographs, particularly picture postcards, in the mid 1890s that ensured the survival of the firm. James Valentine died in 1879 and the business was taken over by the two brothers, although this was principally William as George had gone to New Zealand because of poor health and died in 1890. It was William who led the family business into the new era. In 1894 the Post Office allowed private postcards to be printed and the first British picture postcards were produced that year by Messrs George Stewart and Co. of Edinburgh. At first the message had to be on the same side as the picture with the other side being restricted to the address and the stamp. This was changed in 1897 but it was not until 1902 that the Post Office agreed to the divided back for the message and address.

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Valentine and Sons produced its first postcards in 1895 and reused a lot of their existing photographs, not only at the beginning but literally for decades. The success of the new venture depended on overcoming competition from abroad, especially Germany where vast quantities of early postcards were printed. From 1895 Valentine had been experimenting with the collotype printing process, a lithographic technique that had been developed in Germany. This was a very effective mechanical means of printing photographic images on postcards. Valentine later combined this with another process which added colour. The result was that by the end of the century Valentine had established the perfect method for the cheap production of postcards. The company continued publishing postcards until 1970 and in 1971 the Valentine archive of British views was transferred to St Andrews University Library. These images, ‘totalling approximately 120,000, survive in a wide variety of formats, including loose prints, proofs, albums, postcards, glass and film negatives, all in a broad range of sizes’.13 Valentine and Sons was also well known for the quality of its printing of photographs and when the English-based art photographer Peter Henry Emerson published Life and Landscape of the Norfolk Broads in 1886 ‘he sent off his negatives to the commercial photographic establishment of Valentine and Sons, and the forty illustrations were printed in platinum’.14 Although Wilson and Valentine dominated the Scottish market, they did have some competition. As they had encroached into England, English photographers, particularly Francis Frith and Francis Bedford, photographed in Scotland. But there were also local photographers making landscape views, some to sell on their negatives to the larger producers, but some also producing their own stereo-photographs and prints. Many commercial photographers whose main business was portraiture also produced views for tourists. Alexander McGlashon had a portrait studio in Edinburgh and has been referred to for his brief partnership with D. O. Hill but he also made a series of stereo photographs of places of historic or literary interest titled McGlashon’s Scottish Stereographs and described as ‘Realities of the Waverley Novels, Burns’ Poems, Scottish Songs etc.’ A photographer who specialised in views for tourists was Archibald Burns (1831–80) and he had his base at Rock House, the former studio of Hill and Adamson. A notice in The Scotsman advertised ‘Burns’ Photographic Views of Edinburgh and its Neighbourhood’. His interpretation of ‘Neighbourhood’ was rather wide and included Glasgow and the Trossachs. He also sold ‘Stereoscopic, Cabinet, Card, Scrap and Magic Lantern Views’ as well as ‘Burns’ Series of Panoramas Mounted on Cloth in Elegant Gilt Case’ and these were ‘Sold by All Book and Print Sellers’.15 There are examples of Burns’ photographs which include the ink stamp or sticker of the retailer who sold them, as there are for other commercial photographers. Burns was a talented and perceptive photographer who did not restrict himself to photographing the picturesque, as will be seen in Chapter 7. He

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was born near Hamilton and moved to Edinburgh to work in the book trade and became a prominent amateur photographer. Some of his stereo photographs received a very favourable review in Photographic News, which stated: If we may take these stereograms as a fair average specimen of his skill, he deserves to take as high a rank among photographers as his celebrated namesake among poets.16

Burns turned his hobby into his profession in 1866 and as well as his views for tourists his background in publishing proved useful and his photographs were used to illustrate several books. These were actual albumen prints pasted onto pages. These in particular included Photographs of Edinburgh in 186717 and Picturesque ‘Bits’ from Old Edinburgh in 1868, and the latter will be looked at in more detail in Chapter 7. Many of Burns’ views for tourists are from conventional viewpoints but even with these images he could be innovative. In Photographs of Edinburgh there are views which are far from clichéd, especially National Gallery and Free Church College etc. (Figure 6.12). Extra interest is provided by the low viewpoint and foreground detail. Not all visitors and tourists needed or wanted to buy photographs because they could take their own. Photographers had been travelling to Scotland from the very beginnings of photography to make images, before even tourist prints were available. William Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of negative/positive photography, spent a good deal of time in Scotland and in the autumn of 1844 made a series of photographs for his book Sun Pictures in Scotland, which was published

Figure 6.12

National Gallery and Free Church College etc., Archibald Burns, 1867.

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the following year. It contained 23 photographs which were actual salt paper prints from calotype negatives, pasted onto the pages. This represented the first attempt to photograph the landscape of Scotland on the basis of a coherent theme as the views were associated with Sir Walter Scott and his writing. It is also the first complete book illustrated with photographs because although Talbot had begun to publish The Pencil of Nature in 1844, it was issued in parts and not completed till 1846. Several of the views in Sun Pictures related to Scott’s life including his home at Abbotsford, his tomb at Dryburgh Abbey and George Meikle Kemp’s still incomplete memorial in Edinburgh. There is an apocryphal tale that Talbot photographed the incomplete Scott monument from the window of his room in Robert Cranston’s Hotel, Princes Street, Edinburgh. However, at the time of the photograph Cranston did not have a hotel on Princes Street and when it did open in 184818 it was to the east of the monument, and Talbot’s photograph was from the west with the North Bridge in the background. Talbot also included views of scenes which had become famous through Scott’s description of them, including around Loch Katrine, the setting for The Lady of the Lake, and Melrose Abbey, which is in two of Scott’s novels and The Lay of the Last Minstrel. Talbot chose his subjects well and the photographs he included show that he was not just technically inventive but was creative in his image making. Loch Katrine (Figure 6.13), which is one of several photographs that Talbot made there, captures something of the beauty and mystery of the setting of Scott’s great poem The Lady of the Lake. It is a careful symmetrical composition, balancing pairs of triangles of dark and light with a rustic pier inserting itself into the sheet of water and a spindly tree reaching into the sky. By the time later photographers visited Loch Katrine, the scene had changed. The water of the Loch had been raised in 1859 by the scheme to supply fresh water to Glasgow, which will be mentioned in Chapter 7. Sun Pictures in Scotland was sold by subscription and heading the list was Queen Victoria. Ray McKenzie of the Glasgow School of Art says: Sun Pictures establishes the three principal categories of landscape interest that would structure the visual interpretation of Scotland for many generations to come: the inherent beauty of Scottish natural scenery; the reference to history and literature in defining the meaning of place; the symbolic representation of contemporary culture through a major building project. Sun Pictures in Scotland is not only the first publication of its kind but it represents in embryo much of what landscape photography in Scotland would later become.19

Through associations with Scott, Talbot was able to produce images with greater meaning because viewers would have their own knowledge and understanding of Scott and his work. Following Talbot’s lead photographers ‘came to Scotland in the expectation of finding memorable views as plentiful as salmon and grouse’.20

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Figure 6.13

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Loch Katrine, William Henry Fox Talbot, 1844.

The great English photographer Roger Fenton (1819–69) is best known for his Crimean War images, especially Valley of the Shadow of Death with ‘its terrible suggestions’.21 A more pleasant undertaking for Fenton was to photograph at Balmoral at the invitation of Queen Victoria. Many of his photographs are of family and servants but he was not immune to the lure of Scott and also made images of places associated with him including Rosslyn Chapel and Melrose Abbey. The trend of distinguished photographers visiting Scotland to make images has been sustained from Talbot’s time up until today, and some of the best Scottish photographs of the twentieth century were taken by visiting photographers. As the nineteenth century progressed many amateurs brought their photographic equipment to Scotland, increasing in number as the century drew to a close with advances in materials and equipment. A notable example was Francis Smart (1844–1913) who was an accomplished amateur photographer and President of the Tunbridge Wells Photographic Association. He and his family toured Scotland in 1889 and he produced an album containing 283 photographs. They are of a consistently high technical standard but additionally provide an insight into Scottish life at the time because he turned his camera on ordinary people and events. He was not exclusively concerned with the picturesque or with reproducing the images for tourists and this

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Figure 6.14 The Trossachs, photographer unknown, Kodak round print, c. 1890.

gives an added significance to the images he made, although he still included some scenes associated with Sir Walter Scott.22 Hotels responded by catering to the needs of these tourist photographers. Like many hotels, an advertisement for the Glenburn Hydropathic, Rothesay, as well as listing accommodation and activities includes ‘a darkroom’ among its facilities. Before the end of the century amateurs would not even have to do their own processing with the introduction of new cameras and film negatives and the beginning of the snapshot. Again scenes like Loch Katrine and the Trossachs continued to prove attractive (Figure 6.14). The photographs made by professional photographers for tourists and those by visitors to Scotland themselves represent an essentially romantic view of the country. A less romantic view of Scotland will be seen in the next chapter. Notes 1. Eric Simpson, Going on Holiday, National Museums of Scotland, 1997, p. 26. 2. Mark Haworth-Booth, Camille Silvy, River Scene, France, Getty Museum Studies in Art, 1992, pp. 9–19. 3. The Daily Scotsman, 1 January 1858.

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4. Roger Taylor, George Washington Wilson, Artist and Photographer 1823–93, Aberdeen University Press, 1981, p. 111. 5. Roger Taylor, George Washington Wilson, Artist and Photographer 1823–93, Aberdeen University Press, 1981, p. 132. 6. Roger Taylor, George Washington Wilson, Artist and Photographer 1823–93, Aberdeen University Press, 1981, p. 117. 7. Roger Taylor, George Washington Wilson, Artist and Photographer 1823–93, Aberdeen University Press, 1981, pp. 123–6. 8. Roger Taylor, George Washington Wilson, Artist and Photographer 1823–93, Aberdeen University Press, 1981, p. 149. 9. Tessa Sidey, Valentines of Dundee, Exhibition Catalogue, Dundee Museums and Art Galleries, 1979, p. 2. 10. Ken Hall, George D. Valentine A 19th-Century Photographer in New Zealand, Craig Potton Publishing, 2004, p. 17. 11. Graham Smith, ‘William Henry Fox Talbot’s Views of Loch Katrine’, Bulletin of the Museums of Art and Archaeology, The University of Michigan, Vol. VII, 1984–5, p. 55. 12. J. Harben Valentine, History of Valentines of Dundee, an unfinished and unpublished work covering the history of the business up to 1918, National Library of Scotland, HP4. 200.1465. 13. Cilla Jackson, University of St Andrews Valentine Collection, St Andrews University Library, 1999, p. 7. 14. Anne Kelsey Hammond, ‘Aesthetic Aspects of the Photomechanical Print’, Mike Weaver (ed.), Photography in the Nineteenth Century, The Fine Art Tradition, Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 176. 15. The Scotsman, 31 August 1870, p. 5. 16. ‘Critical Notes’, Photographic News, 25 November 1859, Vol. 3, No. 64, p. 135. 17. Helmut Gernsheim, Incunabula of British Photographic Literature 1839–1875, Scolar Press, 1984, p. 56. 18. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 19. Sara Stevenson et al., Light from the Dark Room, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1995, p. 74. 20. Sara Stevenson et al., Light from the Dark Room, National Galleries of Scotland, 1995, p. 74. 21. John Hannavy, The Camera Goes to War, Photographs from the Crimean War 1854–56, Scottish Arts Council, 1974, p. 31. 22. Bob Charnley, The Summer of ’89, Maclean Press, 1991.

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Chapter 7 Recording Social Conditions and Industrial Change: Photographs of what was Being Lost and what was Replacing it The decades that followed the announcement of the invention of photography were of unprecedented change socially and industrially, which especially affected towns and cities. Yet it was to take time before these changes became a subject for photography. The photographs made by the commercial photographers for tourists were essentially a romanticised view of Scotland, inspired by history and literature and especially the writing of Sir Walter Scott. This approach to creating images, along with portraiture, tended to be the pattern of early photography. Although much was written about social conditions, particularly the poor, the camera was slow to record these conditions. There seemed to be an even greater reluctance to record images of the poor themselves. There was an equal slowness to look at industrial activities. Photography may have been slow but it was ahead of the other graphic arts and when it did respond it excelled and created an art worthy of the great industrial achievements of the age. As well as the quality of the images produced, the documentary value of these photographs is immense, coupled with the visual excitement they transmit of ‘the drama, the complexity and the scale of the heroic age of steel and steam’.1 The fact that photography was slow to look at engineering works in particular is perhaps surprising because as early as May 1840 a young Scottish Engineer, Alexander Gordon, presented a paper to the Institution of Civil Engineers on the benefits of photography to engineering by ‘enabling copies of drawings, or views of buildings, works, or even machinery when not in motion, to be taken with perfect accuracy in a very short space of time with comparatively small expense’.2 This was very forward thinking but photography of this kind was to take some time to realise. The improvement of photographic equipment and materials, and for industrial photography, the introduction of dry plates (which will be described later) were important factors. Thomas Annan (1829–87) was an exceptional photographer and excelled in various aspects of the medium, although it will be his recording of social change and industrial development that will be concentrated on in this chapter. He was born to a farming family at Dairsie, Fife, and became an apprentice lithographic engraver at nearby Cupar, later moving to the large lithographic business of Joseph Swan in Glasgow. Perhaps because the litho-

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graphic trade was slack, or because Annan saw the potential of photography, he made the change and was quickly successful. He began his professional photographic career in partnership in 1854 and by 1857 had a business on bustling Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow. Although Annan worked in the areas of popular photography, he made a reputation at the time as a photographer expert in copying works of art. It was said of Annan: The excellence of his work, more especially in the reproduction of paintings, obtaining for him wide and most honourable distinction. Cultured and with great natural taste for art, he loved the society of artists, and was never so happy as when endeavouring to faithfully translate some masterpiece into monochrome through the medium of the camera.3

It was, as has been seen, Annan who copied the Disruption painting and he was a close friend of D. O. Hill, whom he admired both as a man and as an artist. The body of work for which Thomas Annan is best known today is his series of remarkable photographs of the centre of the City of Glasgow. These scenes of old closes and streets date mainly from between 1868 and 1871. In 1866 the City passed an Act through Parliament to demolish the dreadful slums of the Old Town. Before the work began, the Trustees of the improvements commissioned Annan to make a historical record of the buildings. Annan’s achievement far exceeded his remit, as noted by Sara Stevenson: Theoretically, the photographs were only supposed to show the old buildings which were to be destroyed. But Annan’s photographs go beyond a simple record of past history. With them there is a broad sense of time and emotion – the desperate human past of the buildings is seen to enclose an optimistic future.4

Close No 46 The Saltmarket (Figure 7.1) is unusual in clearly showing inhabitants who appear self assured and confident, especially the boy, with his hands on his hips looking directly at the photographer and appearing to be ‘a figure of independence and hope’.5 Symbolism can be read into Annan’s images. The quantities of washing hanging out, in Close No. 193 High Street (Figure 7.2) and in other photographs, has been interpreted as expressing ‘the people’s capacity to help themselves in better circumstances – they have not reached the inertia of despair’.6 Close No. 193 is also remarkably clear of rubbish lying around and, like the washing, this shows that despite their poverty, people can take care of themselves. The air of hope and optimism is further enhanced by the way that light floods into Annan’s compositions. In Close No. 101 High Street, (Figure 7.3) there is again washing hanging and light from above but there is further symbolism of hope for the future with the eye being led to the light at the opening of the close, round which a young figure peers, showing that there is a way out. Thomas Annan took three years to complete his commission and this

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Figure 7.1

Close No. 46 The Saltmarket, Thomas Annan, 1868–71.

Figure 7.2 Close No. 193 High Street, Thomas Annan, 1868–71.

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Figure 7.3 Close No. 101 High Street, Thomas Annan, 1868–71.

significant length of time would indicate his intention to achieve more than a mere surface representation or a soulless record of decaying buildings. He achieved the subtle light and detail that appeared in his landscape photographs and he must have explored the closes at length, to know the best time of day when the light crept in. He also had a feeling of how he wanted to portray the subject. All of these elements have combined to provide a moving account of the closes; real and heartfelt. He does not dwell on the squalid but was concerned to focus on the historical past of the buildings as well as the distress of the present. But it is not overwhelmingly bleak and there is the optimism that it can be improved. Annan does not depict what appeared in written accounts, one of which stated: I have seen human degradation in some of its worst places, both in England and abroad, but I can advisedly say that I did not believe until I visited the wynds of Glasgow that so large an amount of filth, crime, misery and disease existed in one spot in any civilised country.7

With Annan’s images there is almost a Dickensian feel, there are all the details of distress and sorrow, even tragedy, but there is also the feeling that there could be, at least for some, a happy, or happier, outcome. Thomas Annan with his brother John operated from Rock House,

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Edinburgh, for a short time from 1869 to 1870, after D. O. Hill had moved to Newington. When the Annans moved into Rock House they were not the only photographic business on Calton Hill and a near neighbour was Archibald Burns, mentioned in Chapter 6. Thomas Annan did not stay long in Edinburgh and by the time of the 1871 census the occupant of Rock House was Archibald Burns. It is surprising that in the year after Thomas Annan began his commission to take photographs of the Glasgow closes he set up business in Edinburgh. He certainly made Rock House his home because it was there that one of his sons, William, was born on 28 February 1870. Another son, James Craig Annan, who will feature prominently in subsequent chapters, recalled as a young boy meeting D. O. Hill at Rock House saying ‘he [Hill] gave me a sheet of paper and arranged a model for me to draw while he sat talking to father’.8 Thomas Annan retained his business premises in Glasgow while living at Rock House and with the railway it would have been convenient to travel between the two cities. It would not appear to have been competition from Burns that made Thomas Annan return to Glasgow. It is more likely that the two men were friends and they did have a close business association as the Valuation Roll for 1871–2 shows that Thomas Annan still held the lease for Rock House but Burns was the occupier.9 It is possible the two photographers were a mutual influence. In Burns’ photographs for Picturesque ‘Bits’ from Old Edinburgh, published in 1868, he included grim depictions of some of the more deprived areas of the Old Town. Annan would have known about these photographs as he embarked on his acclaimed images of the Glasgow closes. Annan’s work in turn, photographing buildings to be demolished, is likely to have been a contributory factor to a similar, smaller-scale project Burns was to undertake in Edinburgh. There were fifteen photographs by Burns in Picturesque ‘Bits’, albumen prints pasted onto the pages, and the book takes the reader on a tour from the Castle down the Royal Mile to Holyrood and back through the Cowgate to the Grassmarket. The photograph that is the frontispiece of the book gives an indication that this publication is different from the usual tourist books. The frontispiece is not of one of Edinburgh’s monumental structure like the Castle, Holyrood Palace or the Scott Monument but it is of Old High School Wynd (Figure 7.4), deep in the Cowgate. The text explains why it was chosen to be the first picture in the book: In this High School Wynd (shown in our frontispiece) are some of the old houses, which, when properly lighted up, form as picturesque combinations as any artist could desire. Already the hand of improvement is upon it, and since our view was taken, the stair at the foot on the left, has been removed, considerably marring its effect.10

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Figure 7.4 Old High School Wynd, Archibald Burns, 1868.

Burns felt compelled to photograph this area and this may have been because of its impending loss, which was also the case for the photographs Burns took for the Edinburgh Improvement Trust. In 1867 the Edinburgh Improvement Act was passed and the Chambers Street District formed Area 1 of the Improvement Scheme. Properties were acquired and demolition work began at Martinmas, 11 November, 1870. It is likely that the initiative for the photographs came from Burns himself, knowing what Annan was doing in Glasgow and due to his feelings for the area, which he had already partly recorded in Picturesque ‘Bits’. The photographs were taken hurriedly and were only reported after the event for the approval of the Trustees and for Burns to be paid his fee of £16. 7/-. It is clear from Burns’ photographs that the inhabitants had gone and that the demolition had already started (after 11 November) and there is evidence that the series of photographs was completed by 9 December 1870.11 It was a rush job for Burns, with the additional difficulty of having to work in short hours of daylight and, no doubt, the murkiness of a Scottish winter. Burns did not have the luxury of time that Annan had but if he had delayed there would have been little left to record. In the circumstances, and with the technical challenges that were present, Burns more than overcame the difficulties to create a series of historic and evocative images.

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Burns made some of his most impressive images in the Cowgate, close to Cardinal Beaton’s House. In The South Side of the Cowgate to the East of the Horse Wynd (Figure 7.5) the area’s decay since more illustrious times is graphically apparent. The broken windows look as though they are filled with paper or board, or perhaps even ‘with old hats and cast cla’es of beggary’,12 in an attempt by recent occupants to keep out drafts. The close entrance, where there is a wheelbarrow, was called St Peter’s Pend and the house to the right (or west) was described as follows: There can be no question, from the style and character of the inscription, that the building is of great antiquity, and has probably formed the residence of some ecclesiastical or noble of the court of James IV. It possesses an interest, however, from a more recent and humble occupant. Here was the printing establishment of Andrew Sympson . . .13

This must have been of personal interest to Burns because his commercial work was producing landscape views for the tourist market. They also show Burns’ ability as a photographer and that he could successfully adopt different styles in his image making. Burns’ photographs do not have the same status as those by Annan in Glasgow and it was a much smaller project, both in time and scale, but there is a sense of Burns’ emotional involvement. The photographs by Burns for

Figure 7.5 The South Side of the Cowgate to the East of the Horse Wynd, Archibald Burns, 1870.

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the Edinburgh Improvement Trust have layers of meaning and have been described as follows: The evidently picturesque aspects of these photographs build on a history of graphic images of Edinburgh’s Old Town, often portrayed in decorous decline. Burns’ photographs extend this tradition by exploiting the camera’s deep entanglement with the passing of time, fostering an insistent nostalgia. Their allusive, metaphorical character sits uneasily alongside their more utilitarian documentary functions.14

These photographs were created to record but Burns’ feelings for the history of the buildings comes through, arising from how speedily and thoroughly physical aspects of the past can disappear. Burns faced a dilemma because the sweeping away of the old buildings, with all their character and history, was essential in order to provide better living conditions and Burns had to be ‘reconciled to the loss of the picturesque, if thereby a better sanitary condition could be induced’.15 It has been summed up that ‘the beauty of the photographs of Burns consist in part in the invitation that they make that we accept the simultaneity of regret and hope’.16 Burns was not the only Edinburgh photographer who was prepared to record scenes very different from those demanded by the tourist trade. Thomas Begbie (1840–1915) made important and valuable images and they are all the more greatly appreciated because of the remarkable circumstance that ensured their survival. In 1950, just prior to the demolition of St James Square to build the St James Centre, Stanley Cavaye, a City Councillor, was shown thirty boxes containing about a dozen glass negatives each and told that ‘if he did not remove them within the next three days they would be thrown out into the dustcart!’17 On each of the following three days Cavaye travelled by tramcar from his home in Portobello and rescued the heavy load. The 451 negatives now comprise the Cavaye Collection in the City Art Centre. Market Street and the Old Town from the Scott Monument (Figure 7.6) was one of a series of views by Begbie that show the demolition of buildings to build Cockburn Street. This was a demolition which preceded that of the area Burns recorded. The photograph accurately captures a contemporary description in 1861 that ‘Lord Cockburn Street has ploughed into the vitals of the ancient and gigantic piles of buildings’.18 The building of Cockburn Street took place between 1859 and 1864. Although it was commendable to demolish slum areas, it was only part of the solution because nothing was done on a significant scale to re-house those removed, which only made conditions worse in some areas, particularly in the Old Town. That Begbie decided to record this scene is unusual but it provides fascinating historical documentation. It is thought that part of Begbie’s business was to make photographs for architects and builders, which would suggest

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Figure 7.6 Market Street and the Old Town from the Scott Monument, Thomas Begbie, c. 1860.

he may have had a commercial interest in taking the pictures but the quality of his image making goes beyond simply recording. Begbie photographed the Old Town in a similar area to Burns and his images have more of a feeling of its degradation and decay by using the direct recording power of the camera to show the crumbling fabric and the grim reality of the living conditions of the poor. Begbie made several images of Cardinal Beaton’s House and in his composition Cardinal Beaton’s House from High School Wynd (Figure 7.7) he is making a clear social comment. Reports on the Old Town highlighted the proliferation of spirit shops as part of the moral depravity then prevalent. In this photograph the impression is that the Cowgate consists entirely of these spirit shops, combined with the ghostly shadow of the drayman and his barrels. Dr George Bell, who was photographed by Hill and Adamson, observed: From the toothless infant to the toothless old man, the population of the wynds drinks whisky. The drunken drama that is enacted on Saturday night and Sabbath morning beggars description. The scene is terrible and the music dreadful. It is impossible to say how much is expended on chronic drinking, or the everyday consumption of whisky . . .19

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Figure 7.7 Cardinal Beaton’s House from High School Wynd, Thomas Begbie, c. 1860.

Begbie was turning his camera on scenes that no other photographer at the time seemed to be photographing and this gives his images special value and interest. New Register House (Figure 7.8) shows the foundations of the building which became necessary following the compulsory registration of births, marriages and deaths in 1855, and was build between 1858 and 1863. It is a prosaic scene but Begbie has used his photographic skills. He has chosen an elevated viewpoint and taken care, waiting for the light to illuminate the scene, probably later in the afternoon. It is an exceptional photograph because images of such subjects as building sites are unusual in Victorian times let alone this early, and like many of his other photographs, this one provides an invaluable glimpse into the reality of the past. The use of photography to record engineering and construction projects took on a new dimension when Thomas Annan was commissioned to photograph the building works to provide a plentiful supply of fresh water to Glasgow from Loch Katrine. This commenced in May 1856 and was opened by Queen Victoria in October 1859 and Annan was there to photograph the event (Figure 7.9). He must have taken the photographic technology to the limits to record an action shot of the opening, with the Queen, Prince Albert and their children in a rustic bower surrounded by a sea of heads and the handle to turn on the supply in sharp focus. The total cost of the scheme

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Figure 7.8

New Register House Thomas Begbie, c. 1860.

Figure 7.9 Queen Victoria opening the Glasgow Water Supply, Loch Katrine, Thomas Annan, 1859.

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was an unprecedented £1.5 million and it is still one of the great monuments to Victorian engineering, allowing 50 million gallons of water a day to flow 35 miles to Glasgow. The works went through 13 miles of tunnels and over twenty-five important iron and masonry viaducts. Annan produced two remarkable volumes of photographs; one showing the construction in progress and another showing the principal aspects of the completed works. Outlet of Loch Katrine from East Slope of Ben Venue (Figure 7.10) is from the volume on the competed works and although Annan’s commission was to make an accurate record, like the Glasgow closes, he brings his personal photographic instincts to bear. The photograph is an accurate depiction of the works but they do not dominate and are shown in the context of the wider landscape and the rocky foreground of the slope of Ben Venue. The scheme provided immediate health benefits to the people of Glasgow, with fresh water replacing vile and disease-ridden wells. Although it has been argued that the Glasgow Water Supply Project was not totally altruistic. A sense of urban crisis had been caused with outbreaks of cholera, the new terrible disease from the East, and the more familiar typhus. These diseases spread between the classes and the middle classes were not immune. It was therefore in the interests of the middle classes to improve the conditions of the poor to help eradicate these diseases, which the much better water supply did. On the other hand there was virtually no reduction in the infant mortality rate. In the working class areas of Glasgow the infant death rate was up to

Figure 7.10 Outlet of Loch Katrine from East Slope of Ben Venue, Thomas Annan, c. 1864.

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five times higher than in middle class Kelvinside, largely due to poor housing and diet. Because infant mortality was not a problem for the middle classes, nothing specifically was done to combat the situation, although there were general measures like slum clearance. The other great Victorian engineering project in Scotland was the building of the Forth Bridge and every aspect of its construction was photographed. This was due in part to improvements in photographic technology but also because of the national prestige attached to the building of this iconic structure. The introduction of dry plates dramatically changed the recording of industrial developments by making photography more reliable and less complicated. The process of producing a successful dry glass plate employing gelatine emulsion was first published by the Englishman Dr Richard Maddox in 1871. The first practical version was manufactured in 1873 and after various improvements dry glass plates went into general manufacture in 1878. These factory-coated plates with reasonable keeping qualities were available in a ready-made form that could be used by a person of very limited technical knowledge and they rapidly replaced the wet collodion process. The manufacturing involved drying the prepared gelatine emulsion by prolonged heat and it was discovered that this, which was described as ‘ripening’, produced a considerable increase in sensitivity, or speed. This characteristic made possible consistently shorter exposures and created the need for shutter mechanisms, a rarity before this time, and led to the re-evaluation of camera design, although the bellows style invented by the Scot, C. G. H. Kinnear, continued to be incorporated. By the time the Forth Bridge was being built between 1883 and 1890 there were significant changes to photographic equipment and materials. There was no need for a portable darktent and the photographer could be much more mobile. However, there was still a need to use a tripod and dry plates were heavy and some cameras were still bulky: the official photographer for the building of the Forth Bridge normally exposed glass plate negatives measuring 12 × 15 inches (30 × 37.5 cm). There is no doubt that there was an element of celebration in the depiction of the Forth Bridge and the tenor can be gauged from a contemporary illustration which compares the bridge to some of the principal buildings in the world and dwarfs them. From the outset the building of the bridge was to perform a wider task than enabling trains to travel across the Forth and provide easier access to the Highlands, particularly for tourists. From the outset the engineers who built it and the people who paid for it, saw it as a monument to industry through which Victorian Britain could reassert its progressive, even superior, society. This was especially important after the collapse of the Tay Bridge in 1879. In 1884 Benjamin Baker, the engineer chiefly responsible for the bridge design stated that the task was ‘as impossible as the construction of the Tower of Babel’ and will ‘as a triumph of engi-

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neering eclipse the Ship Canal which has turned Africa into an island, reduce the pyramids to mere child’s play, in all likelihood lead to a revolution in the art of constructing bridges of this description’.20 Photography was used from the start to maintain a high profile for the bridge and to document a success story. There was also the practical purpose of photographs being used as an integrated part of the close examination of the construction by the engineers who, with a project of such magnitude, were constantly aware and constantly checking what they were doing and how they were doing it. The photographer who was to record the construction of the Forth Bridge was not a professional photographer but an assistant engineer, Evelyn Carey (1858–1932). Why Carey was chosen as the photographer is not known but his engineering expertise is likely to have been a factor. He was obviously more than a competent photographer but improvements in photography greatly assisted him and the increasing mobility of the camera made it possible to expose areas of work which had been ignored before. Carey was also in a unique position as no other photographer was permitted to take photographs on the bridge ‘while still unfinished’.21 As an engineer, as well as a photographer, Carey would have understood and sympathised with Baker’s engineering aims and his remit as photographer was to articulate the beauty and soundness of Baker’s intentions. Carey’s photographs are also a rare case because seldom in the history of industrial photography does the photographer have a thorough and professional understanding of the subject. Carey had to record technical detail and many of his images are of this nature and are often closely cropped to emphasis the technical quality of the construction work, as shown in Queensferry Columns, Looking Through Bridge (Figure 7.11). He appears to have thought carefully about composition and viewpoint but with the primary objective of showing the bridge to best advantage. What does not come through in the photographs is any sense of Carey’s personality or individuality being expressed. It is the bridge and its engineering than dominates. That was Carey’s intention and it was his strict adherence to this that adds to the impressiveness of the images. This does not stop his skill being admired and more so when in place of detail he shows the emerging bridge in its wider setting, as in Inch Garvie and Fife – Bird’s Eye View (Figure 7.12). This view allows the awesome scale and the drama of the enterprise to be stressed. The monumentality of the structure can be appreciated and it is not difficult to appreciate Carey’s enthusiasm and commitment as an engineer to the bridge and its revolutionary design. This was a symbol of the Victorians’ efforts to match the natural world with a gigantic product of their industrial age. His images as the bridge nears completion are imbued with real tension, possibly felt by those involved like Carey himself and particularly clear in Constructing the Central Girder (Figure 7.13).

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Figure 7.11 Queensferry Columns, Looking Through Bridge, Evelyn Carey, 1887.

Figure 7.12

Inch Garvie and Fife – Bird’s Eye View, Evelyn Carey, 1887.

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Figure 7.13

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Constructing the Central Girder, Evelyn Carey, 1889.

Photography’s firm link with engineering, first proposed by the Scot, Alexander Gordon, nearly half a century earlier, was decisively strengthened by the photographs of the Forth Bridge. The quality of Carey’s work was soon recognised in various publications. Photography, which was a product of the industrial age, had shown itself equal to the task of recording the bridge’s daunting structure and it was this above all both engineers and the public wanted to see. Carey’s considered photographing of his subject’s imposing scale and beauty makes use of techniques and an aesthetic approach to make clear the engineering intention. But the images can still be appreciated for their composition, content and drama without understanding the structural technicalities of the bridge itself. They have a quality as photographic images as well as a record of engineering construction. Ray McKenzie concludes that Carey’s series of pictures documenting the construction in detail are: a vivid endorsement of the triumphalism of Victorian technology. In the striking audacity of their viewpoints, many of Carey’s photographs confirm the modern reading of the Bridge as a piece of performance art – a gesture of structural bravura intended to restore public confidence in applied engineering as quickly as possible after the collapse of the Tay Bridge in 1879.22

The Forth Bridge became not only a means of conveying tourists, but a tourist attraction it its own right. Surprisingly this was the case during the

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construction when visitors were encouraged to visit and one of the engineers, Wilhem Westhofen, noted: As in most other matters the ladies were to the fore, pluckily climbing into every nook and corner where anything interesting might be seen or learned, up the hoists and down the stairs and ladders, and frequently leaving members of the socalled stronger sex far behind.23

No mean achievement when considering how Victorians ladies had to dress. The bridge became a popular subject for many commercial photographers, including George Washington Wilson (Figure 7.14), as well as amateurs, and continues to be so today. However, not everyone was impressed by the Bridge and William Morris, the leader of the Arts and Crafts movement, described it as ‘that supreme specimen of ugliness’.24 As the nineteenth century drew to a close photography became more and more prevalent in recording construction projects, industrial manufacturing, and social conditions but the quality of the image making did not necessarily attain the standard of those who had gone before. This is not surprising as there had been some exceptional photographers, particuarly when consideration is given to the amount of effort some early photographers took making preparations to record a subject. This point can be further emphasised in an example relating to Thomas Annan. Thomas Annan has been described as ‘arguably the finest landscape photographer of the Victorian period’.25 The care he took in preparing for a photograph and what he took into consideration is illustrated by a page from

Figure 7.14

The Forth Bridge from the South, George Washington Wilson, c. 1890.

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Figure 7.15

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Linlithgow Palace sketch, Thomas Annan, 1862.

his notebook, dated 24 May 1862, with a sketch of Linlithgow Palace (Figure 7.15), which is preserved in the Mitchell Library, Glasgow. Annan must have visited places he planned to photograph to consider viewpoint, composition and light before transporting his weighty photographic equipment. This would have enabled him to think about the subject and appreciate the character and beauty of the place before deciding on his technical approach. The sketch at Linlithgow shows the composition proposed and the time of day to make the desired image is indicated. There is also an interest in the reflection in the Loch. Below the sketch is a note which indicates Annan’s concern about perspective and distance and the problem of relating foreground to middle and background, confirming his awareness of compositional rules in painting. Annan’s photograph of Linlithgow Palace (Figure 7.16) appeared with fourteen more of his prints in an edition of Sir Walter Scott’s Marmion, published in 1866. With such dedicated preparation it is not surprising that Annan’s images received recognition and at the Photographic Society of Scotland exhibition in 1865 his photograph of Dumbarton Castle was awarded a medal. A review said ‘the beautiful landscapes of Mr Annan, which are indicative of deep poetic feeling, and strong appreciation of the beautiful in the artist’.26 With such endeavour and talent it is not surprising that Thomas Annan’s photographs of the Glasgow Water Supply project and Glasgow closes and streets are imbued with a distinctive quality. They have artistic merit which is readily recognised today. But this was not always the case, especially in Victorian times when there were heated debates on the topic of photography as art, which will be the subject of the next chapter.

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Figure 7.16

Linlithgow Palace, Thomas Annan, 1862–6.

Notes 1. John R. Hume, Bill Hare and Andrew Patrizio, Made from Girders: Photography in Industrial Scotland, Talbot Rice Gallery, 1987, p. 5. 2. Institution of Civil Engineers, Minutes, 12 May 1840, p. 57. 3. Sara Stevenson, Thomas Annan, 1829–1887, Scottish Masters 12, National Galleries of Scotland, 1990, p. 5. 4. Sara Stevenson et al., Light from the Dark Room, National Galleries of Scotland, 1995, p. 53. 5. Sara Stevenson et al., Light from the Dark Room, National Galleries of Scotland, 1995, p. 53. 6. Sara Stevenson et al., Light from the Dark Room, National Galleries of Scotland, 1995, p. 53. 7. T. C. Smout, A Century of the Scottish People: 1830–1950, Fontana Press, 1997, p. 40. 8. Letter to Helmut Gernsheim, 21 July 1945, Harry Ranson Centre, University

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9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

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of Texas. Quoted by William Buchanan (ed.), J. Craig Annan, Selected Texts and Bibliography, Clio Press, Oxford, 1994, p. 19. National Archives of Scotland, VR/100/82, Parish of South Leith, p. 7. Archibald Burns and Thomas Henderson, Picturesque “Bits” from Old Edinburgh, Edmonston and Douglas, 1868, p. 49. National Library of Scotland, Photo.La.2. John Galt, Selected Short Stories, Scottish Academic Press, 1978, p. 132. Sir Daniel Wilson, Memorials of Edinburgh in Olden Times, Adam and Charles Black, 1891, Vol. 2, p. 142. Sara Stevenson and Duncan Forbes, A Companion Guide to Photography in the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2001, p. 92. Archibald Burns and Thomas Henderson, Picturesque ‘Bits’ from Old Edinburgh, Edmonston and Douglas, 1868, p. 47. James Lawson, ‘The Urban Landscape between Progress and Decay’, Studies in Photography 1998, p. 8. David Patterson and Joe Rock, Thomas Begbie’s Edinburgh – A Mid-Victorian Portrait, John Donald Publishers, 1992, p. 7. T. C. Smout, A Century of the Scottish People: 1830–1950, Fontana Press, 1997, p. 47. T. C. Smout, A Century of the Scottish People: 1830–1950, Fontana Press, 1997, p. 138. Andrew Patrizio, ‘Fixing Steel Plates to Glass: Benjamin Baker, Evelyn Carey and the Forth Road Bridge’, Scottish Photography Bulletin, No. 1, 1990, p. 21. John R. Hume, Bill Hare and Andrew Patrizio, Made from Girders: Photography in Industrial Scotland, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, 1987, p. 39. Sara Stevenson et al., Light from the Dark Room, National Galleries of Scotland, 1995, p. 77. Sheila Mackay, The Forth Bridge: A Picture History, Moubray House, 1990, p. 4. Elizabeth Cumming, Phoebe Anna Traquair, National Galleries of Scotland, 2005, p. 39. Sara Stevenson et al., Light from the Dark Room, National Galleries of Scotland, 1995, p. 76. The Photographic News, 6 January 1865, p. 4. Quoted by Sara Stevenson, Thomas Annan, 1829–1887, Scottish Masters 12, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1990, p. 12.

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Chapter 8 Photography as Art: Looking at the Images and the Arguments

The debate over whether photography was an art was an emotive one in Victorian times. Arguments were expressed for and against but many influences were at play and it was acknowledged that there was a close interrelationship between photography and art. Thomas Annan’s preparatory sketch for his photograph of Linlithgow Palace (Figure 7.15), shows that he was aware of the principles of composition in the graphic arts and that he applied these in his photographs. There was artistic intention in the work Annan produced. Although this chapter specifically concentrates on art and photography, this has been a theme throughout the book and this reflects how attitudes to photography as art have changed. There is no doubt that photography in Victorian times was an art form, although it was not always recognised and appreciated as such. That it was an art can be determined by a number of considerations, including; the intention of the photographer, the images produced and the effect on the viewer. Photography did establish its own aesthetic terms and become a means of artistic expression. However, to get some understanding of the reluctance of some people to acknowledge photography as an art, the context of Victorian society has to be considered, particularly that of the artistic community. Victorian society was extremely class conscious and stratified in its hierarchy. Art reflected this and in painting some categories, such as history painting (paintings of historic, religious or mythical events), were considered distinguished and noble, whereas genre painting of a narrative nature was thought to be more lowly, as was portraiture, and landscape painting occupied an even lower position in the pecking order. In the early nineteenth century watercolour painting had to struggle to establish its credentials as an art – it was thought of in the same terms as sketching, hardly an activity in itself, merely one stage in an elaborate and difficult process. The definition of art that influential painters such as Sir Joshua Reynolds laid down before the invention of photography was that art involved the ideal. Art was based on the natural truths of accurate delineation but was further worked by the artist towards an ideal, poetic truth. That is to say, artists were using their intelligence and emotions to filter the information

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that come directly to the eye, and were translating the truth into paintings that would appeal to the intelligence and emotions of their audience. Along with a practical objection that photography could not be an art because it was a mechanical process, there was the theoretical objection that it had no involvement with the ideal. Painters and others opposed to photography’s aspiration as art were no doubt helped by the vast weight of poor photographs which were produced: the mass-produced cartes-de-visite, stereocards, etc. by barely technically competent photographers. In a society which was very much impoverished as far as visual images were concerned compared to today, this flood of poor images must have upset the elitist sensibilities of trained and established artists and connoisseurs. Photographers defended their art in several ways and it was clear that the camera did not take the photograph unaided and required the involvement of the photographer. A landscape photographer did not point his camera randomly – a viewpoint was chosen, the image was composed, and the photograph was not taken until the light was right. It has already been noted that D. O. Hill in composing his group portraits expressed the view that ‘the arrangement of the picture is as much an effort of the artist as if in reality he was going to paint it’.1 It was also argued that painters required manipulative skill to achieve their results and a knowledge of paint, brushes and technique, but this could be countered by saying that photographers needed mechanical skills and an appreciation of apparatus, technicalities and chemistry. However, there was the Victorian notion of status, which gave an exclusivity to painting, which was seen as more difficult, more time consuming and produced only one end product. In comparison photography was considered as easier and quicker, with multiple copies produced from a single negative. This is only an outline and it has to be kept in mind that art itself is an uncertain and changing concept. Lady Eastlake, who has already been mentioned and whose views on photography will be referred to again, summed it up well when she wrote that ‘of all the delusions which possess the human breast, few are as intractable as those about art’.2 The debate could be fierce, particularly in Scotland, and eventually led to the demise of the Edinburgh-based Photographic Society of Scotland. The Society really came to an end over the conflict between the professional or commercial photographers and the amateurs, initially arising out of the selection of photographs to be included in the annual exhibitions. The disputes could be bitter with the arguments of the opposing groups often reaching the columns of newspapers and journals. The situation became intractable and the commercial photographers were instrumental in setting up the rival Edinburgh Photographic Society in 1861, which still exists. The Photographic Society of Scotland was disbanded in 1873, having already been inactive for several years.

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It has to be acknowledged that there were at the time limitations to photography as a means of expression – it was monochrome, dependent on light and was constrained in size. But photography was a comparatively cheap and easy art form and not subject to the heavy reserve of painting, which had to adhere to conventions and public expectations. Photographers could take risks, break with convention and experiment with greater ease – and some did with success. It can also be argued that photography set painting free. This was because the ability of photography to record detail meant that the accurate delineation of subjects became less of a priority for some painters. Lady Eastlake in her art criticism expressed what might be considered contradictory views about photography as an art. She wrote specifically in relation to the work of Hill and Adamson that: the beautiful and wonderful calotype drawings – so precious in every real artist’s sight, not only for their matchless truth to Nature, but as the triumphant proof of all to be most revered as truth in art . . . Every truth that art and genius has yet succeeded in seizing here finds its prototype.3

But she also criticised the wet collodion process because ‘the science which has therefore developed the resources of photography, has but more glaringly betrayed its defects’ and ‘when greater precision and detail are superadded the eye misses the further truths . . .’4 But there is a distinction to be made. The calotypes she admired were the work of an artist, D. O. Hill, while the wet collodion process mass produced inferior images by a motley group, tempted by financial reward to the trade of photography. When photography was carried out by artists, it was art, but if the photographer was not an artist the results were not art. The problem lies in defining who are the artists. D. O. Hill’s original use of photography was to get likenesses to include in his Disruption painting. The photographs were to act like sketches for the artistic work, which was the painting. This became a practice many painters used throughout the Victorian period and beyond: photography not as an art on its own but as the servant of art. But in Chapter 2 it was seen that the images Hill and Adamson produced became more that a servant and were works of art in their own right. This was due to Hill’s aspiration for the photographic process and his purpose in the images he was creating with Adamson was clearly artistic. However, as already mentioned, Hill also produced photographs that were merely records, which were of no great quality and were intended to be used as sketches for painting, e.g. Edinburgh Old and New from the Castle and Ballochmyle Viaduct. Many painters used photographs in this way, although some were more prepared to acknowledge it than others. This lack of acknowledgement was likely to have been about the status the Victorians attached to painting.

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One of the most distinctive Scottish photographers whose intention was clearly artistic was Clementina Elphinstone Fleeming (1822–65), who was born at Cumbernauld House near Glasgow and later became Lady Hawarden. It was on the Hawarden family estate in Tipperary, Ireland, that she took up photography in about 1857. Most of her photographs are set in the light-filled rooms of her London home in South Kensington. Lady Hawarden’s artistic training is not known although she did spend part of her early life in Italy. She was active in artistic circles and helped to fundraise for the Female School of Art, and embraced the controversial cause of art education for women. She was also active in exhibiting her own photographic work, with some success. At the Photographic Society of London exhibition in 1863 she won the medal for the best amateur exhibitor and in 1864 she won the medal for the best composition from a single negative. The photographer Oscar Rejlander said in her obituary that ‘she was an earnest believer in the progress of photography, and that it could be used as an art . . .’5 and ‘. . . she aimed at elegant and if possible, idealised truth . . .’6 It is worth mentioning that the year before Lady Hawarden won her first medal there was a major controversy in photography. This was at the International Exhibition in London of 1862 which was intended to echo the Great Exhibition of 1851. Photographers were appalled to find out that their work was not to be exhibited among the fine arts but with machinery. This may have been a reflection of the fact that by this time photography had become an industry supplying mass markets with cartes-de-visite, stereocards and topographical views and was seen as a mechanical process. When the Art Treasures Exhibition had been held in Manchester five years earlier in 1857 there had been no problem in displaying photography along with painting and the other graphic arts. A compromise was reached and photography was provided with a class of its own, neither fine art nor machinery but ‘an independent art’. As will be seen in Chapter 9, when it came to the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1901, photography was prominent among the fine arts. Lady Hawarden did not give any titles to her remarkable photographs and they remain enigmatic. There is no obvious narrative, and no simple answers to the questions she raises. This absence of textual references also makes Hawarden’s images ambiguous and subtle in comparison to the clearly narrative paintings and photographs of the period. The photographs are of her family, mainly her daughters, and she uses them in the way a painter would use models in the making of pictures but there is an added feeling of intimacy. They are sometimes in costume as if in some form of tableau. These images are not to be read in a literal sense as straightforward portraits. The setting of an airy, light and uncluttered space is unlike the usual Victorian interior of heavy furnishings, ornamentation and picture-covered walls. As well as the sparse room Julie Lawson says:

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The essential components of Hawarden’s work are the light, the window, the mirror and the young girl or women – often dressed in white. This atypical minimalism is in itself fascinating and compels an exploration of the motifs in her images.7

Light and the source of light, the window, are very important in Lady Hawarden’s photographs. She allows ‘light to suffuse and dissolve form rather than to disclose it’.8 It is said that in Hawarden’s photographs, like her near contemporaries the Impressionists, ‘light itself is an important part of the subject matter of the work’.9 Hawarden’s art or intervention lies in making the photograph through the manipulation and disposition of the light on the subject, and of the subject itself. There was also ‘the ambition to make pictures with the kind of resonance that stimulates a sympathetic response on the part of the viewer: they are to do with the conveying of mood, the expression of feeling’.10 Expression of feeling was important in Victorian art and ‘her heroines are heroines not of action but of sensibility’11. There is a seriousness and intensity in the way she depicts and dramatises her subject. In one image (Figure 8.1) a man is depicted, with one of her daughters acting the part, seated on the ground and in an attitude of dejec-

Figure 8.1

Untitled, Lady Hawarden, c. 1863.

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tion, clutching at the white dress of the woman, who turns her head to the wall. It may be that Hawarden is demonstrating an engagement with the poetry and painting of her period: the poetry of Tennyson and the painting of the Pre-Raphaelites. Mirrors make a frequent appearances in Lady Hawarden’s photographs and Julie Lawson says that the mirror ‘has a special significance – a highly suggestive element with myriad allusions and associations’.12 Mirrors show us what is real, and unreal, as they reflect a reverse reality. It is also said that: The use of mirrors, in particular, heightens Hawarden’s assault on the transformation of private (female) space. Mirrors not only suggest an outlet in their most obvious compositional and traditionally symbolic function, but they also insist on fragmentation by presenting different facets of the subject depicted – in altering the viewer’s relationship to it – most obviously, perhaps, by making one more acutely aware of the process of identification itself.13

Charles Dodgson, who wrote under the name of Lewis Carroll, was a very good photographer and knew of Hawarden’s work, commenting favourably on it at the exhibition of 1864. Could it be that Hawarden’s use of mirrors in her images had an influence on him? Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published in 1865 and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There in 1871. Hawarden’s motif of a girl dressed in white looking at her reflection in a mirror (Figure 8.2) may have been inspired by an unknown literary association but her imagery may also have been influential. A girl dressed in white looking at her reflection in a mirror was the subject of a painting by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, the American-born painter of Scottish ancestry. Symphony in White No. 2, The Little White Girl (Figure 8.3) dates from 1864 and shares the typical Hawarden motif. It is difficult to be certain about the influence of Hawarden on Whistler but Whistler knew of her work. He had been encouraged to settle in London in 1859 by Seymour Haden whom, it is said, ‘provided him with the atmosphere of high literary, musical and visual culture . . . particularly important were Haden’s collection of old master prints and the enigmatic photographs of his friend Clementina, Lady Hawarden’.14 Julie Lawson says that Hawarden’s photographs ‘are complete artistic expressions that retain the essential qualities of a preparatory sketch, whose very purpose was to catch the “butterfly” of experience – of sentience – of life itself, on the wing’.15 Tragically, Lady Hawarden died of pneumonia in 1865 at the age of 42. She was the mother of ten children, eight of whom survived infancy. While referring to Whistler it is worthwhile looking again at Hill and Adamson’s rather stern profile of Mrs Rigby (Figure 2.13). This photograph anticipates and may even have influenced Whistler’s iconic painting,

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Figure 8.2 Untitled, Lady Hawarden, c. 1863.

Figure 8.3 Symphony in White No. 2, The Little White Girl, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1864.

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Figure 8.4 Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (Portrait of the Painter’s Mother), James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1871.

Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (Portrait of the Painter’s Mother) (Figure 8.4) from 1871. The similarities are striking and it is difficult not to conclude that Whistler must have been influenced by the Hill and Adamson photograph. Whistler is known to have visited Edinburgh in July 1849 and had connections with both Sir William Allan, President of the Royal Scottish Academy, and the Rigbys. This was a long time before the painting was done but the composition may have been retained in his memory and resurfaced as being appropriate to the painting of his mother. The painting itself is almost monochrome, which perhaps also indicates the influence of photography. In the 1890s James Craig Annan corresponded with Whistler and the artist acknowledged that he had been impressed by Hill and Adamson’s photographs. Another painting where the almost monochrome appearance could indicate the influence of photography is by the Scottish artist William Dyce and is titled Pegwell Bay: A Recollection of October 5th, 1858. It looks like a photograph in style and the colours are muted. The idea of a momentary photographic exposure would have suited Dyce’s purpose with this picture

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– an instant in time – because the painting is about time. The date in the title refers to the presence of a comet in the sky, just visible, its nucleus on the picture’s centre line. Astronomical time is invoked by the comet and geological time by the clearly marked strata of the cliffs, which were rich in fossils. These were important themes during this period because of the conflict in Victorian society between those arguing in support of scientific evidence about the creation of the Earth and those defending the literal truth of the age of the Earth in the Bible. Dyce’s family are in the foreground and they are obviously important to him but they indicate the short span of human life, all seen in a moment of time, compared to the immensities of time represented. The use of the photographic effect heightens this contrast. A photograph which caused considerable controversy when it was submitted to the second exhibition of the Photographic Society of Scotland late in 1857 was The Two Ways of Life by Oscar Rejlander. It was a composite print made from thirty negatives and had a strong allegorical narrative, comparing the choices and consequences for a young man between either righteous or dissolute ways of life. Such moralising would have been appreciated by the Victorians and followed the style and content of a painting. The controversy arose because the hanging committee of the Photographic Society of Scotland declined to accept the picture because of its semi-nude female figures. The committee was made up entirely of amateurs, no commercial photographers were included, which helped to fuel the debate about the exclusion of the photograph, and there were acrimonious exchanges in newspapers and journals. An indignant press report of 1 January 1858 stated: Two Ways of Life was exhibited in the Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester. The Prince Consort has three copies of it. Sir David Brewster, the President, has one copy. It will scarcely be credited that the amateur hanging committee of the PSS rejected it because there were half-draped female figures . . . Call at Mr Wood’s, 88 Princes Street, where the rejected photograph may be seen.

In some circles photographs made from composite negatives were considered high art. The English photographer Henry Peach Robinson was a leading exponent of this technique and his composite image Fading Away was exhibited at the third exhibition of the Photographic Society of Scotland. It depicts the macabre subject of a girl dying of consumption. To be fair to the Victorians, the subject matter did cause some concern until it was realised that it was a staged scene and not reality. You could buy a copy of this photograph at the exhibition for 15/- and three were sold. Again, this may have been photography copying painting. Composite photographs, particularly by Robinson, were popular and were widely appreciated, regularly receiving medals at photographic exhibitions. The techniques used by Robinson and Rejlander to produce images does not appear to have been particularly popular with Scottish photog-

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raphers. The instances of printing with composite negatives were almost exclusively for well defined skies. However, there was a photographer based in Markinch, Fife, named Robert Terras (1869–97), who ‘specialised on constructed scenes of Scottish family life, emotional and tender moments, which allowed the viewer to connect, to consider what the people in the picture must be feeling and thinking’16 and he won medals in many exhibitions from Glasgow to Torquay. One of the most acclaimed art photographers of the nineteenth century was Julia Margaret Cameron. Her husband, Charles Hay Cameron, was of Scottish descent and she exhibited at the Photographic Society of Scotland, although it did not prove to be a happy experience. Cameron was enthusiastic and passionate about photography although she was not the greatest technician. For Cameron it was the images that were all important. Her concern was not principally to show what a person looked like, but to reveal the character beneath. When she made a penetrating portrait of the Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle (Figure 8.5) she said that: When I have had such men before my camera my whole soul has endeavoured to do its duty towards them in recording faithfully the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man . . .17

Figure 8.5 Thomas Carlyle, Julia Margaret Cameron, 1860s.

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Carlyle’s ‘candid opinion’ of his portrait was ‘terrifically ugly and woebegone, but has something of a likeness’.18 Cameron’s approach was not widely appreciated at the time, which may account for her lack of recognition in Edinburgh. The year she exhibited Henry Peach Robinson won the medal and in subsequent letters to the Photographic Society of Scotland she was scathing in her comments and never exhibited again.19 A Scottish photographer who was very much influenced by Cameron was Ronald Leslie Melville (1835–1906), 11th Earl of Leven. It was said: If Mrs Julia Margaret Cameron has dropped her mantle we congratulate the Hon Ronald Leslie Melville upon having appropriated it and improved upon her manner. This artist works somewhat in the same style as Mrs Cameron, with this exception, that while his pictures possess all the artistic peculiarities of this lady’s works, confessedly good in that respect, they are also good as photographs, possessing both artistic and technical excellence.20

It has to be said that Cameron may not have been the better technician but she was the greater artist and ‘in emulating Mrs Cameron, Melville adopts her mannerisms without obtaining the dramatic intensity and power . . .’21 But his intention has to be admired and these were to be photographs that had deeper meaning than just surface depiction. It was also said of Melville that some of his portraiture had marked affinities with certain Pre-Raphaelite trends. The association of photography and Pre-Raphaelite painting is not surprising. The Pre-Raphaelites concentrated on the detail of nature in their painting and photography reproduced the same detail. But it was a two-way process, as one critic commented: If photography has contributed, as undoubtedly it has, to the spread of PreRaphaelitism among painters, unquestionably the Pre-Raphaelite painters have reacted on some of our photographers.22

Melville’s depiction of Marie Antoinette (Figure 8.6) shows an expression of feeling and is successfully achieved. But he is copying painting and a painting of a similar composition, Marie Antoinette and the Paris Mob (Figure 8.7), was in fact photographed. This emphasises another point, which will be mentioned again, and that is how by copying paintings photography made them accessible and spread awareness and understanding of art. The relationship between painting and photography is complex but towards the end of the nineteenth century and beyond there was a tendency in some circles to think of art photography as photography that copied the conventions of painting. Fortunately, there were some photographers who continued to think of photography as an art it its own right and the most prominent of these was James Craig Annan (1864–1946). Annan was the son of the photographer Thomas Annan and was born at the appropriately named Talbot Cottage in Hamilton. It was stated that ‘Mr

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Figure 8.6 Marie Antoinette, Ronald Leslie Melville, 1870s.

Figure 8.7 Marie Antoinette and the Paris Mob, unknown artist and photographer, carte-de-visite, 1870s.

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Craig Annan may be said to have inhaled a photographic and artistic atmosphere from childhood, and in a material sense to have been cradled among materia photographica’. Annan was educated at Hamilton Academy until he was about thirteen and then joined the family business but he later attended lectures at Anderson’s College in Glasgow. Annan, for someone who was to become a leader in art photography, had no formal training in fine art. But he did receive a training and appreciation of art by other means. He made photographic reproductions of works of art, his close friends were artists and the firm’s premises in Sauchiehall Street were used as fine art galleries. He would also have been aware of what was happening in photography not only in Britain but in Europe and the USA through exhibitions held in Scotland. Annan himself advocated artistic training and wrote that: The most powerful faculties must be trained . . . by studying closely the best work that has gone before . . . a man can only appreciate or produce artistic work to the extent of his own trained artistic instinct. In photographic art the same reasoning holds good. The development of processes may give the art fuller and more varied means of expression, but unless he feels some beauty to express no amount of scientific training will enable him to make a work of art.23

The most significant event of his early life was in 1883 when he travelled to Vienna with his father. The purpose of this trip was to learn the photogravure printing process from its inventor Karl Klíc. Photogravure was a complicated process of several stages which allowed copper printing plates to be produced from photographs, with carbon tissue used at one stage. The great appeal of photogravure was its ability to reproduce a wide range of tones in a permanent ink print. The process also allowed manipulation of the photographic image by hand at the various stages, offering opportunities for creative work. Annan used his consummate skill to manipulate his images. The final print, sometimes on very thin paper, had the appearance of an art etching. Annan made photogravures from Hill and Adamson prints and Hill and Adamson were an important influence on Annan’s work. His father, as noted earlier, was a friend of Hill’s, and had albums of Hill and Adamson photographs. Craig Annan was familiar with these albums and wrote: In the first place it should be understood that I did not originate but inherited my admiration for Hill. My father, Thomas Annan, had an intense admiration and appreciation of Hill as a man and as an artist. They were intimate friends.24

The Dark Mountain (Figure 8.8) is one of Annan’s earliest prints, from 1890, about the same time he was making photogravures of Hill and Adamson photographs. It is an absorbing image, imbued with an extraordinary mood. Four men are on a mountain ridge with their backs to the viewer, who thus becomes part of the group. ‘There is an invitation to follow them to the glow far ahead, under the lowering sky’ and the image ‘evokes half-forgotten ideas

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Figure 8.8 The Dark Mountain, James Craig Annan, 1890.

of quest or pilgrimage’.25 However, there are a number of interpretations. The photograph has been perceived as an ‘Old Testament subject’26 with Moses suggested. Others have thought that the image is one of ‘nightmares or Dantesque dreams, ideas of massive, awful grandeur, unknown threatening dangers . . .’27 The image is also thought of as a ‘romantic landscape in the tradition of Caspar David Friedrick’.28 It is relevant that there are different meanings and interpretations. The knowledge, experience and feelings which the viewer brings are a factor in responding to the image. Although Annan was highly articulate, he saw and photographed in a way that did not need verbal underpinning or justification. He wrote that: If a picture has any real merit as an aesthetic work, it should touch a sympathetic chord in the intelligence of the observer, and give him pleasure . . . if it does not, no amount of argument will enable him to realise and enjoy the artistic intention of the producer, because the aim of the picture is not to demonstrate any theory or fact, but to excite a certain sensory pleasure . . .29

The Dark Mountain was also the earliest dated print bought by Alfred Stieglitz, the most influential figure in early twentieth century American photography. On a technical point, as well as The Dark Mountain being a photogravure print, Annan used a hand-held camera for the photograph, a

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fairly recent innovation but it became a regular means for Annan to achieve his images. The hand-held camera and shorter exposures helped Annan in what was an instinctive and intuitive approach to creating images. He said: I never followed a predetermined path in my work. I just did what seemed to be the most beautiful and most natural thing at that moment.30

In 1892 Annan toured north Holland with the painter David Young Cameron, who was later knighted. Annan said: It has been when I have associated with artists that I have made my most successful pictures; when I have spent a holiday with others who have little intimate knowledge of art, I have found my camera to be sadly lacking in that subtle something which makes one photograph so very much more interesting than another.31

On a Dutch Shore is from that trip and is asymmetrically composed, the small dark rectangle formed by the group intent on the fish auction is balanced against the shapes of the two fishing boats. It is an intended art photograph and in its ‘abstract composition’ is ‘undeniably modern’.32 Yet it also vividly documents the lives of a people governed by wind and sea. Annan could not have stage-managed this scene and he was exploiting the camera’s ability to seize the composition once the pieces fell into place. Annan’s photogravures from north Holland, all from a hand-held camera, were exhibited in Glasgow alongside Cameron’s etchings. In exhibiting his images alongside a conventionally accepted art form, Annan makes clear his consideration of his work as art. Annan also began to exhibit his work widely throughout Britain, Europe and USA, to significant acclaim. In 1894 Annan and Cameron travelled between Genoa and Venice and an image from this trip, Franciscan of Il Redentore, gives an insight into Annan’s method of working. He wrote ‘I had waited for fully half an hour with the whole composition arranged before the old gentleman in the brown habit came along’.33 Annan’s approach is not unlike that of later photographers and particularly the great, twentieth century French photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, famous for the ‘decisive moment’. The White Friars (Figure 8.9) was also from this visit to Italy and has been described as ‘one of the best pictures ever made by means of the camera’.34 Here Annan is again exploiting the hand-held camera to capture the vigorous stride of the two monks. This is a dynamic work with a real sense of movement. Annan has faded out the background so that it does not distract from the subjects. Advances in photographic technology, hand-held cameras and more sensitive film, made this image possible in a practical sense, and it is very much a photographic image. But Annan wanted to emphasise its artistic qualities, it is not a random image, Annan has reproduced the feeling of movement, interest and engagement with the viewer. Annan was also acclaimed for his portraiture and in his image Janet Burnet (Figure 8.10) the influence of Hill and Adamson can be recognised,

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Figure 8.9 The White Friars, James Craig Annan, 1894.

Figure 8.10

Janet Burnet, James Craig Annan, 1893.

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especially when compared to their portrait Mrs Rigby (Figure 2.13). Annan made a photogravure print of Mrs Rigby in about 1890 – he put her facing in the other direction and kept a print on his mantelpiece, saying that there was ‘no sweeter presentment of old age by photography than this charming portrait’.35 There is perhaps some irony that when his portrait of Janet Burnet was exhibited it was seen by some critics as relating to Whistler’s Mother. The lettering Annan has added to Janet Burnet was inspired by Holbein miniatures, which he would have been familiar with as he photographed those in the collection of Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle. Annan’s friend D. Y. Cameron described Janet Burnet as ‘a masterpiece, one of the finest things in photography since the days and works of D. O. Hill RSA, the painter who when photography was young did work never since excelled and perhaps never equalled’.36 Another woman photographed in profile is Mrs D. Y. Cameron and she is shown embroidering and wearing a dress which displays her skills on the armlets and collar. This is not a domestic reference but one to innovative design activities, of which embroidery was part, engendered by the Glasgow School of Art under its Director, Francis Newbery. Annan moved in this circle and photographed leading artistic figures, including Charles Rennie Macintosh and his wife Margaret Macdonald, and he received immense stimulus from the highly creative society of Glasgow at the time. An important element in the composition of Mrs D. Y. Cameron is the vase with the branch of blossom, giving hints of Japonisme. The influence of Japanese art was a significant factor later in the nineteenth century and Annan is acknowledging this. It was not only art photographers such as Annan who were aware of movements in art, art also had an effect on commercial photographers. Japanese-like floral arrangements became the painted backdrop for portraits and Japanese and even Art Nouveau designs appeared on the back of cabinet prints along with the photographer’s details. William Buchanan, who has written widely about James Craig Annan, says: Annan was deeply rooted in the fine art tradition yet he grasped the unique qualities of the new medium of photography. He stamped his character on his prints in the same way as any other creative artist and he added his photography to the fine art tradition.37

As a case study it is worth concentrating on Loch Katrine to show something of the relationship between art and photography in the nineteenth century. Pictures of Loch Katrine before photography concentrated on Sir Walter Scott’s romanticised description in The Lady of the Lake and painters took considerable license. The Scottish painters Alexander Nasmyth and John Knox created major works of the scene but these were not literal topographical depictions but were idealised in accordance with artistic conventions to

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show a poetic truth. Elements are introduced and exaggerated, particularly the scale of the mountains. Similar effects are used in J. M. W. Turner’s painting Loch Katrine, and this picture is a romantic view of the rugged countryside with elements of the poem. Turner’s painting became particularly well know as an engraving in The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott, published in 1834. Photographers were influenced by the visual culture of the society in which they operated and often chose similar subjects to painters but photographs were more literal depictions and limited in what they could include. However, photographers were aware of literary and historical associations and could choose a viewpoint so that these were essential elements of the scene, and this was the case with George Washington Wilson and James Valentine, as already seen in Chapter 6. George Washington Wilson’s photograph The Silver Strand, Loch Katrine (Figure 6.4) is true to Scott’s poem and the tourists who bought this image would have been aware of the literary associations of the content: the Silver Strand, with its boat ready to be taken to Ellen’s Isle. It was to meet the commercial demand of the tourist market that images like this were produced. But this image and photographs by others such as James Valentine had a detail and an accuracy of scale that also had an effect on painters. Horatio McCulloch’s painting Loch Katrine from 1866 shows greater topographical accuracy compared to the Nasmyth, Knox and Turner pictures. Wilson and Valentine would have been selling photographs of the scene before McCulloch painted his picture. Because the public were aware of photographic images of the scene, McCulloch is more literal in the delineation, although he still included elements, like the deer on the Silver Strand in the foreground, relating to Scott’s poem, which starts with a stag hunt. Later in the century painters took a very different approach to McCulloch and did not attempt to record the detail that could be found in a photograph. Sir James Caw, writing about the Glasgow Boys, stated: A new, or rather a different, feeling for reality was beginning to emerge, and, in response painting by mass and tone rather than in detail and local colour was being experimented with.38

There were other factors involved in this transition but photography was an influence. Photography had another impact on painting and this was because of the process of making multiple copies from a negative. It is a Scot, Sir William Stirling Maxwell (1818–78) who is credited with the first art history book to be illustrated with photographs. In 1848 he published Annals of the Artists of Spain, which included ‘Talbotypes’ or salt prints from calotype negatives. It is claimed that this ‘marked the beginning of a revolution in the methodology of art history, in which photographs and photographically illustrated

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books would become an essential tool’.39 The prints were made by Henry Fox Talbot’s assistant Nicolaas Henneman, although it was originally Hill and Adamson who were to make them but Adamson’s ill heath and premature death prevented this.40 Paintings of all kinds were photographed and copies were readily available. The fact that they were still monochrome did not effect their popularity. Prints were bought like view scraps and pasted into albums. It is not unusual to see photographs of views and of paintings together. This made paintings much more widely available and had an effect on popular culture, which will be picked up in the next chapter. These prints also had an effect on artists and the most popular pictures were normally of a sentimental or narrative nature. A typical example is From Dawn to Sunset (Figure 8.11) by the Scottish painter Thomas Faed, showing a humble domestic interior from his native Galloway and contrasting the person in the bed whose life is drawing to a close with the young baby on its mother’s lap. The same subject was later copied by the photographer Henry Peach Robinson in his composite image Dawn and Sunset. The debate over the relationship between photography and art will continue in the next chapter, which will also cover the increased interest and popular participation in photography at the end of the nineteenth century, due to technical improvements.

Figure 8.11

From Dawn to Sunset, Thomas Faed, 1861.

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Notes 1. Sara Stevenson, ‘Cold Buckets of ignorant criticism: Qualified success in the partnership of David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson’, Photographic Collector, Vol. 4, No. 3, Winter 1983, p. 337. 2. Lady Eastlake, Quarterly Review, London, April 1857, pp. 442–68. Reprinted in Photography: Essays and Images, Beaumont Newhall (ed.), Secker & Warburg, 1981, pp. 91–2. 3. Elizabeth Rigby (later Lady Eastlake), Quarterly Review, March 1846, pp. 337–8. Quoted by Sara Stevenson, Hill and Adamson’s The Fishermen and Women of the Firth of Forth, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1991, p. 49. 4. Lady Eastlake, Quarterly Review, London, April 1857, pp. 442–68. Reprinted in Photography: Essays and Images, Beaumont Newhall (ed.), Secker & Warburg, 1981, p. 91. 5. Virginia Dodier, Clementina, Lady Hawarden: Studies from Life 1857–1864, V&A Publications, 1999, p. 89. 6. Julie Lawson, Women in White, Photographs by Clementina Lady Hawarden, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1997, p. 5. 7. Julie Lawson, Women in White, Photographs by Clementina Lady Hawarden, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1997, p. 9. 8. Julie Lawson, Women in White, Photographs by Clementina Lady Hawarden, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1997, p. 7. 9. Julie Lawson, Women in White, Photographs by Clementina Lady Hawarden, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1997, p. 7. 10. Julie Lawson, Women in White, Photographs by Clementina Lady Hawarden, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1997, p. 9. 11. Julie Lawson, Women in White, Photographs by Clementina Lady Hawarden, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1997, p. 11. 12. Julie Lawson, Women in White, Photographs by Clementina Lady Hawarden, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1997, p. 11. 13. Lindsay Smith quoted by Julie Lawson, Women in White, Photographs by Clementina Lady Hawarden, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1997, p. 11. 14. Julie Lawson, Women in White, Photographs by Clementina Lady Hawarden, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1997, p. 17. 15. Julie Lawson, Women in White, Photographs by Clementina Lady Hawarden, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1997, p. 20. 16. New Acquisitions Exhibition caption, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, June 2005. 17. Sylvia Wolf, Julia Margaret Cameron’s Women, The Art Institute of Chicago, 1998, p. 38. 18. Anne Thackeray Ritchie and H. H. Hay Cameron, Alfred, Lord Tennyson and His Friends, T. Fisher Unwin, 1893, p. 12. 19. Roddy Simpson, ‘Julia Margaret Cameron and the Photographic Society of Scotland’, History of Photography, Vol. 28, No. 1, Spring 2004, pp. 82–7. 20. British Journal of Photography, May 1871, p. 216. Quoted by Helen Smailes, ‘A Gentleman’s Exercise: Ronald Leslie Melville, 11th Earl of Leven, and the

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21.

22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

Amateur Photographic Association’, The Photographic Collector, Vol. 3, No. 3, Winter 1982, p. 263. Helen Smailes, ‘A Gentleman’s Exercise: Ronald Leslie Melville, 11th Earl of Leven, and the Amateur Photographic Association’, The Photographic Collector, Vol. 3, No. 3, Winter 1982, p. 270. British Journal of Photography, 20 June 1862, p. 293. Quoted by Helen Smailes, ‘A Gentleman’s Exercise: Ronald Leslie Melville, 11th Earl of Leven, and the Amateur Photographic Association’, The Photographic Collector, Vol. 3, No. 3, Winter 1982, p. 270. William Buchanan (ed.), J. Craig Annan, Selected Texts and Bibliography, Clio Press, 1994, p. 50. William Buchanan (ed.), J. Craig Annan, Selected Texts and Bibliography, Clio Press, 1994, p. 19. William Buchanan, The Art of the Photographer J. Craig Annan, National Galleries of Scotland, 1992, p. 27. William Buchanan (ed.), J. Craig Annan, Selected Texts and Bibliography, Clio Press, 1994, p. 58. William Buchanan (ed.), J. Craig Annan, Selected Texts and Bibliography, Clio Press, 1994, p. 108. William Buchanan, The Art of the Photographer J. Craig Annan, National Galleries of Scotland, 1992, p. 27. James Craig Annan’s address to the exhibition of the Royal Photographic Society 1900. Quoted by William Buchanan (ed.), J. Craig Annan, Selected Texts and Bibliography, Clio Press, 1994, p. 91. William Buchanan (ed.), J. Craig Annan, Selected Texts and Bibliography, Clio Press, 1994, p. 102. William Buchanan, The Art of the Photographer J. Craig Annan, National Galleries of Scotland, 1992, p. 15. William Buchanan, The Art of the Photographer J. Craig Annan, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1992, p. 15. William Buchanan (ed.), J. Craig Annan, Selected Texts and Bibliography, Clio Press, 1994, p. 8. William Buchanan, The Art of the Photographer J. Craig Annan, National Galleries of Scotland, 1992, p. 11. William Buchanan (ed.), J. Craig Annan, Selected Texts and Bibliography, Clio Press, Oxford, 1994, p. 121. William Buchanan (ed.), J. Craig Annan, Selected Texts and Bibliography, Clio Press, 1994, p. 96. William Buchanan (ed.), J. Craig Annan, Selected Texts and Bibliography, Clio Press, 1994, p. 21. Sir James Caw, Biography of Sir James Guthrie, MacMillan, 1932, p. 12. Hilary Macartney, ‘William Stirling and the Talbotype volume of the Annals of the Artists of Spain’, History of Photography, Vol. 30, No. 4, Winter 2006, p. 291. Hilary Macartney, ‘The Reproduction of Spanish Art: Hill and Adamson’s Calotypes and Sir William Stirling Maxwell’s Annals of the Artists of Spain (1848)’, Studies in Photography 2005, pp. 16–23.

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Chapter 9 Populist Activity and Pictorialism: Popular Involvement with Cheap and Mass Produced Cameras and Photographers with Artistic Aspirations There was a dramatic increase in popular participation in photography at the end of the nineteenth century because of technical improvements largely due to one man, George Eastman (1854–1932). It could be said that Eastman was the epitome of the American entrepreneur. By his mid-teens he was earning a living as a bank clerk but soon quit to set up the Eastman Dry Plate Company in Rochester, New York. He consistently made breakthroughs in technology and he was assisted in this by appointing the best people he could find. Eastman also introduced mass-production, but his greatest contribution to the popularisation of photography was a marketing idea. By offering a total package of camera, film and processing, Eastman eliminated at a stroke all the fuss and aggravation that had formerly been associated with photography. He also gave the world the name Kodak, a word he devised for the following reasons: It was a purely arbitrary combination of letters, not derived in whole or part from any existing word, arrived at after a considerable search for a word that would answer all requirements for a trademark name. The principal of these were that it must be short; incapable of being mis-spelled so as to destroy its identity; must have a vigorous and distinctive personality; must meet the requirements of the various foreign trademark laws . . .1

George Eastman revolutionised photography with the introduction of the Kodak Camera in 1888. The original Kodak was a box camera 3¼ × 3¾ × 6½ inches (8 × 9.5 × 16 cm) with a fixed focus lens of 27 mm focal length and an aperture of f 9, with a barrel shutter. It was fitted with a roll of film long enough for 100 negatives, which were round and 2½ inches (6.5 cm) in diameter. The No. 2 camera was introduced in 1889 and among its improvements was larger prints, 3½ inches (9 cm) in diameter. The backing for the gelatine emulsion was originally paper but was replaced with transparent nitrocellulose. Eastman’s most important innovation was the provision of a photo-finishing service. The camera was supplied loaded and was sent back for processing. All the Kodak owner had to do was point the camera at the subject, release the shutter by pressing the button, wind on the film for the next exposure, and re-cock the shutter by pulling a string that wound up the clockwork mechanism. Eastman’s slogan ‘You Press the Button, We

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Do the Rest’ (Figure 9.1) was exact and it caught on with the public. Implicit in this slogan was a public view that good photography could be as easy as the push of a button. This led to many professionals and established amateurs taking a more painterly approach to the finished photographic print. George Eastman transformed the practice of photography from a pursuit by a small band of professionals and affluent amateurs, who could afford the time to develop their skills and the money to buy the processing equipment, into the hobby and pastime of millions of people throughout the world. However, the original Kodak camera cost 5 guineas and was still beyond the means of most of the population. But the Kodak Camera did start what became known as snapshot photography, photography which had no artistic pretensions and was simply an informal record of a person, a place or an event. At the end of the nineteenth century, for the first time, there was a substantial number of images of how ordinary people lived. These records, with a factual accuracy and clarity that only photography can achieve, are an invaluable social history resource. Kodak continued to innovate throughout the 1890’s and folding pocket cameras were introduced. These cost a guinea and a twelve-exposure roll of film cost about two shillings to develop and print. Rolls of film, which Eastman introduced in 1894, although he did not invent, overcame the need to return the camera. These rolls of film had a black paper backing, which provided protection for the film so that it could be loaded and unloaded in daylight. Even with these innovations the cost of photography remained expensive for a sizeable proportion of the population. Kodak sought a very simple camera which could be mass produced for very low cost. The result was the Brownie camera of 1900, which cost five shillings and put photography within the reach of most people who wanted to own a camera, and as many women as men owned cameras. The improved Brownie No 2 (Figure 9.2) was introduced in 1901.

Figure 9.1

Kodak advertisement, 1892.

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Figure 9.2 Kodak Brownie No. 2 Camera.

George Eastman was only part, albeit a very successful part, of a significant technical advance in photography which had began to gain momentum with the introduction of dry plates. By the 1880s the mass production of dry plates made them cheaper and the number of people taking up photography as a hobby began to increase. At the end of the nineteenth century an increasing number of outlets such as chemists and opticians offered processing services but there were still a lot of photographers who wanted to do their own processing. A crucial aspect of the use of hand-held cameras, and the reason they became such a craze, was the instantaneous exposure. By the 1890s this meant an exposure of between about 1/50 of a second up to 1/500 of a second. There were advances in lens design, enhanced by improvements in glass, resulting in greater optical quality. At the beginning of the 1890s a lens with a widest aperture of f 8 was considered advanced but by 1899 Zeiss had a lens with a maximum aperture of f 3.5, allowing for much shorter exposures. With faster lenses and quicker exposures there were improvements in shutters. There were numerous designs including; go and return, diaphragm, roller blind and focal plane shutters. These were operated by springs, clockwork mechanisms and even elastic bands and pneumatics. So in technological

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terms the end of the Victorian period was a time of great change. Film speeds increased, camera design changed, as did lenses and shutter mechanisms, and all of these innovations showed great variety. Coupled with these advances there was another important change, that of calculating the exposure. There was no real application for a system for calculating exposures until the arrival of commercially manufactured dry plates, which were made consistently from batch to batch. Previously photographers, particularly with the wet collodion process, worked out exposures by experience, according to their equipment and the chemical solutions they made up and used in processing. The first scientifically-based exposure calculator was designed by two Englishmen, Ferdinand Hurter and Vero Charles Driffield. They carried out pioneering investigations to determine the sensitivity or speed of sensitive materials. In 1888 they patented a calculator and the Hurter and Driffield speed measurement method was used by many plate and film manufactures up until the Second World War. This was the beginning of the exposure meter, and many types and variations were soon on the market. The H&D speed rating was superseded with other standard classifications like ASA, DIN and ISO. This speed rating was another advantage for the amateur in producing reliable results. Along with all the other advances at the end of the Victorian period there were also changes to photographic printing paper. Platinum paper produced prints of particularly fine quality and was favoured by the more artistic photographers. Like the salt paper process used at the beginning of photography, platinum prints were made on paper impregnated, rather than coated, with light-sensitive chemicals – in this case compounds of iron and platinum rather than silver. Because the chemicals were absorbed into the paper one of the ways to identify platinum prints is their very matt surface. Commercial photographers also produced platinum prints, usually described as platinotypes, but only the better photographers. William Crooke had an opulent studio at 103 Princes Street, Edinburgh, and described himself as an ‘Artist Photographer’ with platinum prints as a speciality. In the July 1898 edition of the Practical Photographer he was said to hold ‘one of the highest positions as an exponent of portraiture’. His sitters included Andrew Carnegie and he was one of the exhibitors at the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1901. An example of his commercial work makes clear that he was a talented photographer. Unknown woman (Figure 9.3) shows a young woman in a hat in profile and sensitively treated due to the subtle lighting. The back of the cabinet card lists Crooke’s recent awards at exhibitions and the last one from Paris in 1892, indicating that the photograph is slightly later. Although platinum prints had an undoubted quality, the most popular printing paper to supersede albumen paper was silver gelatin paper, although there was also collodion or collodion chloride paper. Silver gelatine paper followed silver gelatin dry plates and came in a variety of forms. The first

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Figure 9.3 Unknown Woman, William Crooke, c. 1893.

gelatin-based papers were development papers, exposed briefly under a negative and then developed in chemicals. Previously prints were printed out, left in the development frame with the negative until the image had fully appeared, then fixed and washed. Developed silver gelatin papers made before the Second World War may show metallic tarnishing or mirroring on the surface, especially over the darker tones. Increased paper sensitivity used with developing-out papers made practical enlargements by projecting the negative and larger prints became a common product of commercial photographers and sometimes these were hand-coloured. Claude Low, who had a studio at 54 Cockburn Street, Edinburgh, was one of many commercial photographers who supplied enlarged photographs and a print of an Unknown Woman (Figure 9.4), signed and dated 1901, is a fine example of his work. It is a well composed photograph showing his skill but the print has been retouched and there are signs of mirroring. With the introduction of practical enlarging it was no longer necessary for negatives to be the size required for contact printing so negatives became smaller, which resulted in smaller cameras. For enthusiastic amateurs who still wanted to do their own processing, papers were also available. ‘Gaslight’ papers were sensitive enough to be

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Figure 9.4

Unknown Woman, Claude Low, printed out enlargement, 1901.

briefly exposed in a printing frame to artificial light, like gaslight, before being developed in chemicals. Printing out papers, often called ‘P. O. P.’ and a description first used by Ilford Ltd in 1891, were like salted paper and albumen prints, and were printed in daylight until the image fully appeared. The popularity of photography also changed the mechanical reproduction of images. The earliest and very successful mechanical means of reproducing photographs was the Woodbury process. This was introduced in the 1860s and produced very fine images, comparable to actual photographs. However, these could not be printed along with typescript and still had to be made separately and then bound into publications. It was Woodburytypes that John Thomson had used for the circulation of his photographs of Street Life in London in 1876–7. The process was still in use in the 1890s. By far the most important means of reproducing photographs, and the one that had the widest and most enduring impact, was half-tone printing because the photograph could be printed along with text. The principle of half-tone printing breaks up a photographic image into very small dots, which give the appearance of shades of grey. This idea was first suggested by the inventor of negative/positive photography William Henry Fox Talbot as early as 1852 but did not receive commercial application until the 1880s. The procedure was for a negative to be made of the photograph through a screen of small

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holes, the more holes the greater the quality of the final image. The negative was used to expose a photographically sensitive printing plate, which when developed and chemically etched leaves the dots standing proud. This could then be used for printing along with typeface or letterpress. This method was particularly suitable for long print runs of reproduced photographs. Initially, half-tone printing appeared in periodicals and the quality of production in the 1890s could be very high, but it is best known for mass reproduction of images in newspapers. Its introduction changed visual culture and in various forms it has remained in use up until today. The greater circulation of images through mechanical processes had an impact on the popularity of photography, particularly making it fashionable and a feminine activity. Princess Alexandra, the future Queen as the wife of Edward VII, was a very active and accomplished photographer and there is an image of her with her box camera in hand from 1889–90, which was widely reproduced and would have had considerable impact on women. Princess Alexandra’s photographs were included in exhibitions and there were reports of her activities in the photographic press. A place where hand-held cameras were in profusion was the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1901. Just to confirm that by 1901 photography had become a universal hobby, it was reported that ‘every third or fourth exhibition visitor sported a camera’2 and about equally divided between men and women. There was also a weekly publication The Exhibition Illustrated for the duration of the International Exhibition, which was packed with half-tone photographs, many from amateurs. The photographs in The Exhibition Illustrated covered a wide range of subjects from the formal, like the press opening (Figure 9.5), including several women, which appeared on the first title page, to candid amateur shots and sports activities. The latter indicating how fast the exposure times had become, now capable of freezing action. T. & R. Annan and Sons were the official photographers to the exhibition and had a large studio in a prominent location on the exhibition site, which appeared in The Exhibition Illustrated. Numerous photographs of the exhibition were produced and appeared in a variety of forms. Especially attractive was a series of carefully composed picture postcards using the photogravure process (Figure 9.6). As well as being a partner in the photographic business with his brother John, James Craig Annan had a much more important role at the exhibition as the convener of the Photography Sub-Committee of the Fine Art Section. Photography had pride of place in Gallery 1 of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. Annan was responsible for this and he produced an exhibition that merited this position. But Glaswegians never seemed to have any inhibitions about showing photographs in art galleries, nor any problem in financing them. Regular exhibitions were held at the Glasgow Institute for the Fine Arts. Annan had

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Figure 9.5 The Exhibition Illustrated, title page of first edition, 4 May 1901, with halftone photograph of press opening.

Figure 9.6

Glasgow International Exhibition, T. & R. Annan and Sons, postcard, 1901.

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already in 1897 been on the organising committee of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Amateur Photographic Association, which mounted an international exhibition that attracted 30,000 people. However, the International Exhibition at Kelvingrove was on a totally different scale. In the fine summer of 1901 Glasgow was the centre of the world and especially the world of photography. There were officially eleven-and-a-half million visitors to the International Exhibition, ‘which could be generously rounded up to thirteen million including the free admission of school children’.3 As the photography exhibit was housed in the first room after the entrance to the new art gallery, most of the visitors would have seen the photographs. William Buchanan writes: The momentous issue for the photographers was that their work had been accepted on an equal footing with the other works of art in the gallery. These included Boudin’s The Jetty, Trouville, Millet’s Going to Work, Monet’s Storm at Etretat, Sidley’s Snow Scene, Whistler’s La Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine, Rodin’s John the Baptist. Scottish painting included McTaggart, Guthrie, Lavery and Walton.4

The photographic exhibition at the Glasgow International Exhibition is still regarded as the greatest ever held in Scotland; there were 500 exhibits by 201 artists from around the world, the largest groups being from America, England, France and Scotland. What was important about the exhibition was that it looked back to where photography had come as well as forward to where it was going. In addition, because of the quality and range of the images displayed and the calibre of the photographers, it showed very precisely the international state of photography in 1901. Among the first photographs visitors saw were earlier photographs, especially a series by Hill and Adamson which confirmed Scotland’s pre-eminent place in the history of photography. Annan was familiar with, admired and had been influenced by Hill and Adamson’s work. He had also made photogravures of Hill and Adamson prints and it was Annan who was responsible for re-introducing Hill and Adamson to a world that had forgotten them. Glasgow was not the first time that Annan had arranged to exhibited Hill and Adamson images as he had shown his photogravures from their prints in Hamburg in 1899, and they were subsequently shown at exhibitions in America and Europe. Annan was to achieve an even wider audience and greater recognition for Hill and Adamson’s work when his photogravures were published by Alfred Stieglitz in his influential photographic periodical Camera Work. The nine Hill and Adamson photographs that Annan chose to exhibit were almost all portraits and demonstrate how masterful the partnership had been. With the Hill and Adamson prints, Annan included three by John Forbes White, who was active in the 1850s with his close friend Thomas Keith.

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There was nothing by Keith and his work was not rediscovered until later. When White saw his own photographs, which he had made over 40 years before, he was full of naïve admiration and exclaimed: ‘isn’t that beautiful? I try to think someone else did them’.5 Annan only exhibited four of his own photographs and three were portraits, including Janet Burnet (Figure 8.10). From the other photographers it is appropriate to begin with Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) who was a hugely influential figure and was to the lead the Photo-Secession in the USA the following year. Among the photographs exhibited by him was Winter, Fifth Avenue. Similar to Annan’s images, Stieglitz used a hand camera and had waited three hours in a fierce snow storm watching for, in his words, ‘the moment in which everything is in balance; that is satisfies your eyes’.6 This image is an indication of the lead he would later take in the movement for ‘straight’ photography. This was straightforward photography, without the affectations of art, concentrating on what photography could do well and not looking to the other graphic arts. However, at this time he was what was described as a pictorialist: photographers who saw themselves as artists and were interested in the highest form of art of which photography was capable. Through Annan’s personal friendship with Stieglitz there was a very good selection of American photographers. In addition to Stieglitz they included, Gertrude Käsebier, Frank Eugene, F. Holland Day, Joseph T. Keiley, Edward Steichen, and Clarence H. White. All these Americans and others went on to establish international reputations: ‘Glasgow had the bonus of a preview of a special moment in the history of American photography because the American section of the exhibition was to become, with minor changes back in New York, the first exhibition of Stieglitz’s Photo-Secession’.7

The founding of the Photo-Secession marked the beginning of a continuous tradition of self-consciously artistic photography in the United States. With this new identity came a sense of solidarity and a confidence that photography as an art had a future as well as a history. In Britain it could be said that the secession had already taken place. This was in 1892 when the Linked Ring was formed and had aims similar to those adopted by the American Photo-Secession. Some of the Americans involved, including Stieglitz, were members of the Linked Ring. The reason for forming the Linked Ring was principally because of what were considered the over technical pre-occupations of the Royal Photographic Society. The members of the Linked Ring wanted to separate themselves from ‘purely scientific and practical craftsmen’ and Annan was a prominent member of this organisation. Among the members of the Linked Ring to exhibit at Glasgow were William Crooke, George Davison, Frederick H. Evans, Frank Meadow

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Sutcliffe, Henry Peach Robinson and husband and wife Will and Carine Cadby. Photographers from continental Europe were well represented, particularly France with Robert Demanchy, who was regarded as the leading French Secessionist photographer. The display organised by James Craig Annan at the Glasgow International Exhibition was a great celebration of photography with full recognition given to it as a fine art. There was also widespread critical acclaim for photography and there is no doubt that in 1901 Scotland was in the vanguard of world photography. Notes 1. Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography, fifth edition, The Museum of Modern Art, 1997, p. 129. 2. William Buchanan (ed.), J. Craig Annan, Selected Texts and Bibliography, Clio Press, 1994, p. 25. 3. Perilla Kinchin and Juliet Kinchin, Glasgow’s Exhibitions: 1888, 1901, 1938, 1988, White Cockade, no date, p. 93. 4. William Buchanan (ed.), J. Craig Annan, Selected Texts and Bibliography, Clio Press, 1994, p. 25. 5. Dorothea, Lady Fyfe, John Forbes White: Miller, Collector, Photographer 1831–1904, Corporation of the City of Edinburgh, 1970, p. 10. 6. Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography, fifth edition, The Museum of Modern Art, 1997, p. 153. 7. William Buchanan (ed.), J. Craig Annan, Selected Texts and Bibliography, Clio Press, 1994, p. 27.

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Chapter 10 Scotland’s Enduring Photographic Legacy

The photographic exhibition organised by James Craig Annan in Glasgow in 1901 was important for the history of Scottish photography as it looked back at some of Scotland’s unrivalled practitioners of photographic art and especially Hill and Adamson. But much still needed to be done by Annan and others so that Scotland’s photographic heritage could be understood and appreciated. Annan had exhibited original prints by Hill and Adamson at the Photography Exhibition in Glasgow in 1901 and he had already exhibited and continued to exhibit his photogravures of their images. He went further and was responsible for the work of Hill and Adamson, and especially their magnificent portrait studies, becoming known ‘to a world that had forgotten them’.1 The American photographer Albert Stieglitz said that Annan would be remembered for this if nothing else and it was Stieglitz who ensured that the work of Hill and Adamson reached a wider and critically important audience. Between 1903 and 1917 Stieglitz edited the prestigious and influential photographic journal Camera Work and Hill and Adamson photographs appeared in several issues. This was hugely important in getting their work recognised and establishing their international reputation, especially in North America. Hill and Adamson’s work first appeared in Camera Work No. 11 in July 1905, when Annan contributed an article on Hill. Six portraits were reproduced: Dr Munro, Mrs Rigby, Lady Ruthven, John Gibson Lockhart, ‘Christopher North’ (Professor Wilson), and Mrs Jameson (Figure 10.1), and all of them were photogravures by Annan. This selection was made because in his article Annan refers to Hill busying ‘himself portraying the men and women of intellect in Edinburgh’.2 The recognition that Annan generated meant that ‘at this time throughout Europe and America the father of pictorial photography was loudly proclaimed as D. O. Hill’3. The French photographer Robert Demanchy wrote: Those who think that pictorial photography is a product of the last quarter of a century would do well to study the work of David Octavius Hill.4

It was to take some time before Hill and Adamson’s work was seen as the product of a remarkable partnership, and for Robert Adamson to be equally

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Figure 10.1 Mrs Jameson, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, photogravure by James Craig Annan, Camera Work, 1905.

acknowledged with Hill. Two further issues of Camera Work, No 28 in October 1909 and No 37 in January 1912, included selections of images by Hill and Adamson and these were not just portraits. There were informal groups such as The Minnow Pool and The Birdcage (Figure 10.2) as well as Fishergate, North Street, St Andrews. Without such exposure in Camera Work it is unlikely that Paul Strand, a young American photographer and protégé of Stieglitz who was to become one of the great photographers of the twentieth century, would have written in Camera Work No 49/50 in June 1917: Others, too, have given beauty to the world but those workers, together with the great Scotchman, David Octavius Hill, whose portraits made in the 1840s have never been surpassed, are the important creators of a living photographic tradition.5

Although the Edinburgh stationer and publisher Andrew Elliot was to produce a privately published book about Hill and Adamson in 1928 it had very limited circulation. The first major book, David Octavius Hill, Master of Photography, was by the Viennese art historian Heinrich Schwarz and was first published in Germany in 1931. It was immensely influential and brought Hill and Adamson’s work to the attention of another generation. Schwarz wrote:

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Figure 10.2 The Birdcage, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, photogravure by James Craig Annan, Camera Work, 1909. Just as Gutenberg’s printings have remained the outstanding creations of typography, so are Hill’s calotypes examples of photography so brilliant that by the side of them everything which has taken place since pales. As though photography, in the first hours of its existence, had wished to manifest and unfold all its possibilities, as though it had hoped at once to approach all but the farthest reaches of the attainable. Hill’s calotypes stand isolated and unequalled at the dawn of a new art . . . From the very insufficiencies of this man’s technical equipment grew the subtlest artistic achievements. Alone in the new world of graphic representation, he sensed instinctively all the secrets of a new vision.6

Paul Strand reviewed the English version of the book in the USA for the Saturday Review of Literature and commented on the ‘inner strength Hill saw and recorded’ as well as ‘the indestructible dignity of his arrangements in light and dark – so simple in effect, so difficult to achieve.’ Strand revered Hill all his life and in 1940 when an exhibition on the history of photography was being organised at the Museum of Modern Art in New York Strand said that the first of the four floors ‘should be all David Octavius Hill’.7 Strand visited Scotland in 1954 to stay in the Western Isles and made a body of work, published under the title Tir a’Mhurain, which is among the most significant photography produced in Scotland in the twentieth century.

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Another leading American photographer, Ansel Adams, wrote in Making a Photograph in 1936 that: Were the shade of David Octavius Hill, the great pioneer of photography, to visit our world and discuss the present aspects of the art and craft of the camera with ghostly objectivity, we could attend the oracle with reasonable devotion . . . a jewel was formed in the matrix of the early nineteenth century, indigenous to its period and sincere in its presentation. David Octavius Hill succeeded both in making remarkable photographs and in demonstrating one of the basic principles of art: complete expression within the limitations of the medium.8

Annan’s own images appeared in several issues of Camera Work. One of these was Stirling Castle (Figure 10.3) from 1906, which appeared in 1907, and shows that Annan had lost none of his power as an image maker. The photograph is full of interest, drama and texture with the focus on the white horse. The density of the sky varies in prints so it was obviously something that Annan changed during printing. William Buchanan describes the image as follows: The castle appears grandly romantic atop its volcanic crag, but it merely oversees the farmyard beneath. Annan is interested in the roofs of the farm building, the way the tiles come round the circular roof of the work mill, the way the tiles fit together, the pattern they make. A white horse stands alone in the yard. It seems to echo the white clouds in the sky.9

Figure 10.3

Stirling Castle, James Craig Annan, 1906.

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Annan’s international celebrity as a photographer brought a young American, Alvin Langdon Coburn, to see him in Glasgow. Annan helped Coburn to make photogravures from Hill and Adamson prints. It was to be Coburn who was responsible for the re-discovery of the work of a neglected early Scottish photographer, Thomas Keith, and it happened in a rather fortuitous way. Coburn settled in Britain and in 1914 was living in London when he first heard about Keith. Coburn was having tea with a couple of acquaintances near the British Museum and was mentioning the photographs of D. O. Hill when one of those present, who Coburn had just met, asked ‘but do you know of the work of Dr Keith?’. Coburn was immediately all ears, especially when he was told that the photographs ‘were as good in their way as Hill’s’.10 Coburn lost no time in contacting the Keith family and received a kind reply asking him to call. Coburn not only saw prints but also negatives and he was allowed to borrow some of these. The prints he made were exhibited at the Royal Photographic Society in 1914 and in New York in 1915. This was the first time that Keith’s work had been shown since his death. Thomas Keith has had several supporters since and he is now unquestionably acknowledged as one of the greatest Scottish photographers. His work was championed internationally in the 1950s by the German photographer Mark Neven du Mont but he had not been ignored in Scotland. He was included in an exhibition and publication by the Saltire Society. The slim volume, The Scottish Tradition in Photography by R. O. Dougan, was published in 1949. The author did a great deal as a collector and pioneer of Scottish photo-history. In 1945, Dougan approached the then occupant of Rock House, Hill and Adamson’s former studio, who was the widow of the photographer Francis Caird Inglis. Rock House had been used by a succession of photographers and items from Hill and Adamson’s time in the 1840s were still there and Dougan arranged to purchase them all. There were almost 1,000 original negatives and prints by Hill and Adamson. But there was more, including a dark slide for a camera used by Adamson, a volume containing the names of the people who subscribed to Annan’s photographic prints of the Disruption painting, as well as many later prints and boxes of glass negatives of Hill and Adamson’s images that had been made by subsequent photographers who used Rock House as their studio. When Dougan, City Librarian of Perth, accepted a post at Trinity College Dublin, he wanted this collection to be kept together and to remain in Scotland. He sold it, for a modest amount, in 1953 to the Glasgow University Library, which was the only institution that was interested. It is now in the Special Collections Department and the Hill and Adamson images are available on its website.11 The Dougan Collection is of international importance and is now housed in a new photographic store, which ensures an ideal environment for the preservation of photographic materials. It was through generosity that the most extensive collection in the world of

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Thomas Keith prints and negatives came to be preserved in Edinburgh Central Library. Because of his interest in old buildings, which were so effectively portrayed in many of Keith’s photographs, the architect Robert Hurd built up an extensive collection of Keith’s images. When Hurd died in 1963 these photographs were gifted to the City and there followed an exhibition and a publication by the City Librarian, C. S. Minto. There was a further exhibition of Keith’s photographs at Stills Gallery, Edinburgh, in 1977, which later toured the country and in 1981 John Hannavy published Thomas Keith’s Scotland. The year 1981 was significant for photo-historical research in Scotland because Sara Stevenson published David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Catalogue of their Calotypes taken between 1843 and 1847 in the Collection of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, which still remains a classic reference work. However, the modern era of authoritative publications on Scottish photography began in 1970 with Katherine Michaelson’s catalogue to A Centenary Exhibition of the Work of David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, which contained an immense amount of original research. This major exhibition toured widely throughout the United Kingdom and was organised by the Scottish Arts Council and was greatly influenced by its then Assistant Director, William Buchanan. In 1973 followed David Bruce’s impressive and lucidly written book Sun Pictures, the Hill-Adamson Calotypes. A wider public was made aware of Scotland’s photographic history with A Moment in Time by John Hannavy in 1983, which looked at aspects of photography between 1840 and 1920 and was accompanied by an exhibition that toured Scotland, and a television series. Numerous publications have followed, which have been invaluable sources for this book and are listed in the bibliography, and they represent a blossoming in the appreciation of Scotland’s exceptional photographic heritage. Two other events from the 1980s are worthy of mention in affirming Scotland’s serious claim to its photographic history. In March 1983 a threeday international symposium, Scottish Contributions to Photography, was organised by William Buchanan, then Head of Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art. Its ostensible purpose was to celebrate the appointment of Thomas Joshua Cooper as the first head of the newly-created Department of Fine Art Photography. But the symposium achieved much more by concentrating on the rich history of Scottish photography and its world-class practitioners, and consequently resulted in the founding that year of the Scottish Society for the History of Photography (SSHoP). Most of the publications referenced as sources in this book are by those associated with SSHoP and the original research they have carried out has been invaluable. The Society continues through its publications and events to raise the profile of Scottish photography and not exclusively from an historic perspective. In 1984 the Scottish National Photography Collection (SNPC) was founded at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. This followed discussion about the place of photography within the national institutions of Scotland

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and it was concluded that this should be within the Portrait Gallery, building on the Hill and Adamson collection already there. Sara Stevenson, who had done much ground-breaking research on Hill and Adamson was placed in charge. She has said that even then the decision to take photography seriously was made ‘late in the day’ but she oversaw the collection grow from about 5,000 works to over 38,000 on her retirement in 2010. Again the SNPC is not solely concerned with historic photography, but that is where many of its treasures are to be found, due in a significant part to the generosity of people who have gifted works. It could be said that Sara Stevenson took up the mantle, as did James Craig Annan, to strive to ensure that the wonderful richness of Scottish photography receives the prominence and recognition it deserves. Stevenson also shares credit with Annan for organising a magnificent exhibition. This was Light from the Dark Room, a celebration of Scottish photography held in the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh in 1995, and a rival to Annan’s exhibition of 1901 for the accolade of the greatest ever held in Scotland. The catalogue of Light from the Dark Room contained contributions from a selection of experts in the field and is an exceptional publication containing some of the most informed writing on Scottish photography. An all-time high in celebrating the history of Scottish photography arrived in 2002 with the D. O. Hill Bicentenary Festival, organised by SSHoP. It was a year-long event and included exhibitions throughout Scotland, several books, a play, a TV drama documentary and an international conference hosted by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. At the same time there was a campaign to establish the Scottish National Photography Centre at the former Royal High School building in Edinburgh. It was an extremely ambitious aim and despite a huge amount of effort, support and goodwill the vision was not realised. However the campaign did unite a consensus of disparate photographic interests on the need for greater emphasis on photography in the Scottish cultural framework. It may not prove too drastic a setback that the Scottish National Photography Centre did not materialise at the former Royal High School because, although the building is magnificent in terms of its architecture, it was far from ideal for the purpose and the cost of adaption and maintenance would have been prohibitive. The continued absence of a central institution whose sole purpose is to promote awareness of Scottish photography, past and present, and be a single source of information on photographic activities and resources in Scotland, remains a glaring omission. In 2007 the first book to look at Scottish Photography as a whole from the time of its invention until the present was published. This was Scottish Photography: A History by Tom Normand of St Andrews University and it is an enlightened and thorough exploration of the major themes. Coupled with intellectual rigour, the book establishes relationships between images made at different times, demonstrating a distinctive Scottish tradition.

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It was Tom Normand who gave the opening lecture in the Spring of 2009 to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of SSHoP. The theme of the conference was not only to look back but to look forward to where photography in Scotland was going in the future. An encouraging aspect of that future is that when the Scottish National Portrait Gallery re-opened after refurbishment in late 2011, there was a permanent and dedicated photography gallery. This gallery holds new exhibitions several times a year and facilitates the practice of integrating photography into exhibitions on other themes. But perhaps more encouraging are the people in other national and local institutions who continue to do a great deal to not only preserve but create awareness of the depth, range and excellence of Scottish photography, often with limited resources. It is appropriate to end with a quotation by Sara Stevenson that sums up what this book has been attempting to demonstrate for Victorian Scotland. She wrote: Photography has a distinguished place among the arts in Scotland, because it is the only art form the Scots practised to the highest standard from its invention. It is recognised that Scottish photographers have helped to define the character and uses of photography within the world context and, as a result, that the art may be regarded as inextricably Scottish.12

Notes 1. William Buchanan (ed.), J. Craig Annan, Selected Texts and Bibliography, Clio Press, 1994, p. 27. 2. William Buchanan (ed.), J. Craig Annan, Selected Texts and Bibliography, Clio Press, 1994, p. 120. 3. William Buchanan (ed.), J. Craig Annan, Selected Texts and Bibliography, Clio Press, 1994, p. 27. 4. Robert Demanchy, ‘Pictorial Photography’, Camera Work, No. 18, 1907. Reproduced in Alfred Stieglitz Camera Work The Complete Illustrations 1903–1917, Taschen, 1997, p. 351. 5. Paul Strand, ‘Photography’, Camera Work, No. 49/50, 1917. Reproduced in Alfred Stieglitz Camera Work The Complete Illustrations 1903–1917, Taschen, 1997, p. 351. 6. Heinrich Schwarz, David Octavius Hill, Master of Photography, George G. Harrap, 1932, p. 18. 7. Quoted by Sara Stevenson, The Personal Art of David Octavius Hill, Yale University Press, 2002, p. 49. 8. Quoted by Sara Stevenson, The Personal Art of David Octavius Hill, Yale University Press, 2002, p. 50. 9. William Buchanan, The Art of the Photographer J. Craig Annan, National Galleries of Scotland, 1992, p. 27.

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10. Alvin Langdon Coburn, ‘The Old Masters of Photography’, Century Magazine, October 1915, p. 911. 11. Available at www.special.lib.gla.ac.uk/hillandadamson (last accessed February 2012). 12. Sara Stevenson et al., Light from the Dark Room, National Galleries of Scotland, 1995, p. 9.

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Bibliography

Ashbee, Felicity and Julie Lawson (1987), William Carrick, Scottish Masters 3, Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland. Bartram, Michael (1985), The Pre-Raphaelite Camera: Aspects of Victorian Photography, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Bremner, Fred (2007), My Forty Years in India, Bath, Pagoda Tree Press. Bruce, David (1973), Sun Pictures: The Hill-Adamson Calotypes, London, Studio Vista. Buchanan, William (1992), The Art of the Photographer J. Craig Annan, Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland. Buchanan, William (1994), J. Craig Annan, Selected Texts and Bibliography, Oxford, Clio Press. Buchanan, William et al. (1997), By Royal Appointment, Aberdeen’s Pioneer Photographer, George Washington Wilson, Aberdeen, AUL Publishing, 1997. Butterworth, Mark (ed.) (2010), Destination St Kilda, Lochs, Islands Book Trust. Charnley, Bob (1991), The Summer of ’89, Portree, MacLean Press. Coe, Brian (1976), The Birth of Photography, London, Ash & Grant. Coe, Brian and Paul Gates (1977), The Snapshot Photograph: The Rise of Popular Photography 1888–1939, London, Ash & Grant. Coe, Brian (1978), Cameras: From Daguerreotype to Instant Picture, London, Marshall Cavendish. Coe, Brian and Mark Haworth-Booth (1983) A Guide to Early Photographic Processes, London, Victoria and Albert Museum. Crawford, James, Lesley Ferguson and Kristina Watson (2010) Victorian Scotland, Edinburgh, Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS). Crawford, Robert (2011), The Beginning and End of the World: St Andrews, Scandal and the Birth of Photography, Edinburgh, Birlinn. Crawford, William (1979), The Keepers of Light, New York, Morgan & Morgan. Dimond, Francis and Roger Taylor (1987), Crown & Camera, The Royal Family and Photography 1842–1910, London, Penguin Books. Dodier, Virginia (1999), Lady Hawarden, Studies from Life 1857–1864, London, V&A Publications. Dougan, R. O. (1949), The Scottish Tradition in Photography, Edinburgh, Saltire Society. Durie, Alastair and Roy Mellor (1995), George Washington Wilson and the Scottish Railways, Aberdeen, AUL Publishing. Ferguson, Lesley (2009), Wanderings with a Camera in Scotland: The Photography of

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Erskine Beveridge, Edinburgh, Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS). Ford, Colin and Roy Strong (1974), An Early Victorian Album The Hill/Adamson Collection, London, Jonathan Cape. Fowler, John (2006), Mr Hill’s Big Picture, Edinburgh, Saint Andrew Press. Gardner, Alexander (2001), Gardner’s Photographic Sketchbook of the American Civil War 1861–1865, New York, Delano Greenidge Editions. Gernsheim, Helmut and Alison (1969), The History of Photography: From the Camera Obscura to the Beginning of the Modern Era, London, Thames & Hudson. Green, Lesley, (1978), George Washington Wilson, Studies from a Point of View, Edinburgh, Scottish Arts Council. Hall, Ken (2004), George D. Valentine A 19th Century Photographer in New Zealand, Nelson, NZ, Craig Potton Publishing. Hall, Roger, Gordon Dodds and Stanley Triggs (1993), The World of William Notman, Boston, MA, David R. Godine Publishers. Hannavy, John (1981), Thomas Keith’s Scotland, Edinburgh, Canongate. Hannavy, John (1983), A Moment in Time, Glasgow, Third Eye Centre. Hannavy, John (1997), Victorian Photographers at Work, Princes Risborough, Shire Publications. Hannany, John (ed.) (2008), Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, London, Routledge. Harker, Margaret (1979), The Linked Ring, London, Heinemann. Haworth-Booth, Mark (ed.) (1984), The Golden Age of British Photography 1839–1900, New York, Aperture. Heyert, Elizabeth (1979), The Glass-House Years, Victorian Portrait Photography 1839– 1870, London, Allanheld & Schram/George Prior. Hockney, David (2001), Secret Knowledge: Rediscovery of the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters, London, Thames & Hudson. Howarth-Loomes, B. E. C. (1974), Victorian Photography: A Collector’s Guide, London, Ward Lock. Hume, John R., Bill Hare and Andrew Patrizio (1987), Made from Girders: Photography in Industrial Scotland, Edinburgh, Talbot Rice Gallery. Jackson, Cilla (1999), Valentine Collection, St Andrews, St Andrews University Library. Lawson, Julie (1990), William Donaldson Clark, Scottish Masters 15, Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland. Lawson, Julie (1997), Women in White: Photographs by Lady Hawarden, Edinburgh, Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Lawson, Julie, Ray McKenzie and A. D. Morrison-Low (1992), Photography 1900: The Edinburgh Symposium, Edinburgh, The National Museums of Scotland and The National Galleries of Scotland. Linkman, Audrey (1993), The Victorians, Photographic Portraits, London, Tauris Parke Books. Lyden, Anne M. (1999), In Focus: Hill and Adamson, Los Angeles, CA, J. Paul Getty Museum.

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Macdonald, Gus (1979), Camera – A Victorian Eyewitness, London, Batsford. Mackay, Sheila (1990), The Forth Bridge: A Picture History, Edinburgh, Moubray House Publishing. McQuade, Brian Thom (2006), Sir John Lavery Photography, Glasgow International Exhibition of 1888, Glasgow, Th. A. H. M. van Asperen. Michaelson, Katherine (1970), A Centenary Exhibition of the Work of David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Edinburgh, Scottish Arts Council. Minto, C. S. (1966), Thomas Keith 1827–1895, Surgeon and Photographer, Edinburgh, Edinburgh Corporation Libraries and Museums Committee. Minto C. S. and Dorothea Fyfe (1970), John Forbes White, Miller, Collector, Photographer, Edinburgh, Edinburgh Corporation Libraries and Museums Committee. Moffat, John (no date) John Moffat Pioneer Scottish Photographic Artists 1819–1894, Eastbourne, JSM Publishing. Moss, Michael, Stephen Elson and John Hume (no date), A Plumber’s Pastime, Burnley, Turner & Earnshaw Ltd. Mozley, Anita Ventura (1977), Thomas Annan Photographs of the Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow 1868/1877, New York, Dover Publications. Newhall, Beaumont (1997), The History of Photography, fifth edition, New York, Museum of Modern Art. Normand, Tom (2007), Scottish Photography: A History, Edinburgh, Luath Press. Ovenden, Richard (1997), John Thomson (1837–1921) Photographer, Edinburgh, Stationery Office. Paget, Martin (2010), Photographers of the Western Isles, Edinburgh, John Donald. Patterson, David and Joe Rock (1992), Thomas Begbie’s Edinburgh: A Mid-Victorian Portrait, Edinburgh, John Donald. Pearce, Nick (2005), Photographs of Peking, China 1861–1908, Lampeter, The Edwin Mellen Press. Pritchard, Michael (ed.), Technology and Art: The Birth and Early Years of Photography, Bath, Royal Photographic Society Historical Group. Robertson, Robin (1997), A Painted Field, London, Picador. Rodger, Robin H. (2002), The Remarkable Mr Hill, Perth, Perth Museum and Art Gallery. Schaaf, Larry J. (1993), Sun Pictures, Catalogue Six, New York, Hans P. Kraus Jr. Schaaf, Larry J. (2000), The Photographic Art of William Henry Fox Talbot, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. Simpson, Roddy (2002), Hill and Adamson’s Photographs of Linlithgow, Linlithgow, West Lothian History and Amenity Society. Smailes, Helen (1992), Kenneth MacLeay, Scottish Masters 16, Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland. Smith, Graham (1990), Disciples of Light, Malibu, CA, J. Paul Getty Museum. Smout, T. C. (1987), A Century of the Scottish People 1830–1950, London, Fontana. Stevenson, Sara (1981), David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Catalogue of their Calotypes taken between 1843 and 1847 in the Collection of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland.

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Stevenson, Sara and Julie Lawson (1986), Masterpieces of Photography from the Riddell Collection, Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland. Stevenson, Sara and John Ward (1986), Printed Light, Edinburgh, HMSO. Stevenson, Sara (1988), James Cox, Scottish Masters 8, Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland. Stevenson, Sara, Julie Lawson and Michael Gray (1988), The Photography of John Muir Wood: An Accomplished Amateur 1805–1892, Edinburgh, Scottish National Portrait Gallery and Dirk Nishen Publishing. Stevenson, Sara (1990), Thomas Annan, Scottish Masters 12, Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland. Stevenson, Sara (1991), Hill and Adamson’s the Fishermen and Women of the Firth of Forth, Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland. Stevenson, Sara et al. (1996), Light from the Dark Room, Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland. Stevenson, Sara (2002), The Personal Art of David Octavius Hill, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2002. Stevenson, Sara (2002), Facing the Light: The Photography of Hill and Adamson, Edinburgh, Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Stevenson, Sara and Duncan Forbes (2009), A Companion Guide to Photography in the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland. Taylor, Roger (2007), Impressed by Light, British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840–1860, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Taylor, Roger (1981), George Washington Wilson, Artist and Photographer 1823–93, Aberdeen, Aberdeen University Press. Thomas, D. B. (1964), The First Negatives, London, HMSO. Thomson, John (1985), Through Cyprus with a Camera in the Autumn of 1878, London, Trigraph. Weaver, Mike (1989), British Photography in the Nineteenth Century: The Fine Art Tradition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Wichard, Robin and Carol Wichard (1999), Victorian Cartes-de-Visite, Princes Risborough, Shire Publications.

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Acknowledgements

In the preparation of this book I am indebted to numerous individuals and it is impossible to name each one but there are some that I have to mention. The original proposal that I should prepare a book based on my course came from Loura Brooks at the University of Edinburgh and she was perhaps a little surprised that I acted upon it but continued to provide assistance and advice. Going back to the very beginning, it was Bill Hare of the University of Edinburgh who proposed that I present a course on the history of Scottish photography. In preparing this book and throughout the pursuit of my interest and research in early photography I have benefitted greatly from others that have gone before and especially those involved with the Scottish Society for the History of Photography (SSHoP). For nearly thirty years it has pioneered an appreciation and understanding of Scottish photography with authoritative research published in its journals. The overwhelming majority of the references and sources used and quoted in this book come from those associated with SSHoP. These include: James Berry, David Bruce, William Buchanan, James Downs, Roger Farnham, Robin Gillanders, John Hannavy, Lilly Koltun, Julie Lawson, Ray McKenzie, Simon Manfield, Richard Morris, Alison Morrison-Low, Harry Magee, Richard Ovenden, Sara Stevenson, Larry J. Schaaf, Graham Smith, Lindsey S. Stewart, Peter Stubbs, Roger Taylor, Monica Thorp, Nigel Thorp and Russ Young. Special thanks go to David Weston, the Keeper of Special Collections at the University of Glasgow Library, who not only arranged for the reproduction of many images from the University of Glasgow Library but provided support and encouragement. I am also very grateful to the other members of staff in the Department of Special Collections. Other individuals and institutions I have to thank for providing assistance with research and illustrations are: Susan Bell, Aberdeen City Libraries; Kim Downie, University of Aberdeen; Douglas Annan; William A. Cadell; Kevin MacLean, Fiona Myles, Alison Stoddart, Susan Varga, Brenda Woods and other members of staff, Central Library, Edinburgh; David Patterson, City Art Centre, Edinburgh; Edinburgh University Library; Wullie and Nettie Evans; Jackie Burns and Anne Lyden, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Neil McIlraith; Inga McVicar; Sheila Masson; Patricia Grant, The Mitchell Library, Glasgow; National Archives of Scotland; Duncan Forbes and Philip Hunt, National Galleries of Scotland: Graham Hogg, National Library of Scotland; National Museums of Scotland; Paul Adair and Robin

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Rodger, Perth Museum and Art Gallery; Carl Radford; Lesley Ferguson, Dawn Evers and Kristina Watson, Royal Commission on Ancient and Historic Monuments Scotland; Joanna Soden, Royal Scottish Academy; Andrew Simpson; Elma Lindsay, Stirling Library; Cilla Jackson and Norman Reid, University of St Andrews Library. Sara Stevenson stoically read an early draft of the text and I greatly appreciate her comments and positive feedback. Alison Morrison-Low read a revised draft and I am very grateful for her enthusiastic response and suggesting I approach Edinburgh University Press. I am extremely grateful to everyone at Edinburgh University Press and to John Watson in particular for his guidance and assistance. Finally, I have to thank my wife Margaret who has not only indulged me in this manifestation of my photographic obsession but has supported it.

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Index

Note: bold page references are to illustrations Aberdeen, 15 Adams, Ansel, 189 Adamson, John, 12, 13–14, 47, 50, 65, 77, 78 First calotype portrait taken in Scotland, 13–14 Man and Greyhound, 65 Miss Godfrey, 65 Adamson, Robert, 6, 12, 13, 14, 21–2, 22, 28–9, 156, 172, 186–8 James Craig Annan and, 166, 168–70, 183, 186 and Disruption painting, 24–5 and D. O. Hill, 21, 23–4, 28–9, 34, 43 Eastlake on, 156 Thomas Keith and, 57 Wood and, 53 The Birdcage, 187, 188 ‘Christopher North’ (Professor Wilson), 186 The Dennistoun Monument with D. O. Hill, his Nieces and the Gravedigger, 37, 37 Dr Munro, 186 Edinburgh Ale, 25–6, 26 Elizabeth Johnstone Hall, Newhaven Fishwife, 38–9, 39 English Yachtsmen and Newhaven Fishermen, 40 Fishergate, North Street, St Andrews, 42, 42, 187 Fishwives Reading a Letter, Newhaven, 40 Hugh Miller, 32, 33 James Linton, his Boat and Bairns, 40, 41 John Gibson Lockhart, 186 Lady Ruthven, 186 A Lane in Newhaven, Fishwives at Home, 40–2, 41 Mann Sisters, 27, 28 The Minnow Pool, 187

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The Morning After ‘He greatly daring dined’, 26, 27 Mrs Jameson, 186, 187 Mrs Rigby, 35, 36, 159–61, 170, 186 The Pastor’s Visit, 39–40, 40 Professor George Moir, 48, 49 Rev David Thomas Ker Drummond, 61 Reverend Thomas Henshaw Jones, 30–1, 31 A Reverie, 34, 35 The Scott Monument seen from Princes Street, 35, 36 Sheriff John Cay, 32, 33 Sir David Brewster, 11 Sir John Steell, 32, 32 Albert, Prince, 81, 82, 116, 162 albumen paper, 9, 69 albums, 37, 85–6, 86, 125, 125, 126–7, 127, 172 Alexandra, Princess, 181 Alhazen, 3 Allan, William, 161 ambrotype see collodion positive Annan, James Craig, 78, 138, 161, 164– 70, 184, 189–90, 192 and Glasgow International Exhibition, 181–5, 186 and Hill and Adamson, 166, 168–70, 183, 186, 187, 187, 188 The Dark Mountain, 166–8, 167 Franciscan of Il Redentore, 168 Janet Burnet, 168–70, 169, 184 Mrs D. Y. Cameron, 170 On a Dutch Shore, 168 Stirling Castle, 189.189 The White Friars, 168, 169 Annan, John, 137, 181 Annan, Thomas, 25, 78, 134–8, 139, 140, 143–5, 150–1, 166 sketches, 151, 151, 154 Close No. 46 The Saltmarket, 135, 136

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Annan, Thomas (cont.) Close No. 101 High Street, 135, 137 Close No. 193 High Street, 135, 136 Dumbarton Castle, 151 Linlithgow Palace, 151, 152 Outlet of Loch Katrine from East Slope of Ben Venue, 145, 145 Queen Victoria Opening the Glasgow Water Supply, 143, 144 Annan, William, 138 Archer, Frederick Scott, 56, 68 architecture, 63, 103 art, definitions and beliefs concerning, 154–5 astronomy, 110–11 Australia, 50, 112 babies as subjects, 76, 81 backdrops, 76 Badger, Gerry, 59 Baker, Benjamin, 146–7 Ballantyne, James, 25, 26 Ballochmyle, 43 Balmoral Castle, 82, 115, 116, 131 Barbaro, Daniele, 3 Barry, Charles, 63 Becket, Samuel, 74 Unknown Couple, 74–5, 75 Bedford, Francis, 128 Begbie, Thomas, 141–3 Cardinal Beaton’s House from High School Wynd, 142, 143 Market Street and the Old Town from the Scott Monument, 141–2, 142 New Register House, 143, 144 Belgium, 48, 54, 92 Bell, George, 25, 26, 142 Beveridge, Erskine, 112 Black, Joseph, 4, 5 Blackie, John, 23 Blanquart-Éverart, Louis Désiré, 69 book illustrations, stereoscopic, 71, 72 book production, 71, 111, 129–30, 171–2, 180–1 Bough, Sam, 25 Brady, Mathew, 106, 107 Bremner, Frederick, 105–6 Armed Afghan Tribes, 106, 106 Street in Srinagar, 105–6 View on the Jhelum River, 106

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Brewster, David, 10–12, 11, 13, 14, 24, 47, 48, 87, 162 stereoscope, 70–1, 71 Brewster, Henry, 12, 92 British Association for the Advancement of Science, 12 Brown, John (critic), 26, 40, 43, 44 Brown, John (servant), 81, 82 Brown, John Taylor, 43, 44 Bruce, David, 191 Buchanan, William, 170, 183, 189, 191 building sites, 143 Burns, Archibald, 78, 128–9, 138–41, 142 book Photographs of Edinburgh, 129 book Picturesque ‘Bits’ from Old Edinburgh, 129, 138–9 National Gallery and Free Church College etc., 129, 129 Old High School Wynd, 138–9, 139 The South Side of the Cowgate to the East of the Horse Wynd, 140, 140 Burns, Robert, 38, 83 D. O. Hill illustrations for, 23, 23 Burton, William K., 111 book Modern Photography, 111 book Practical Guide to Photography, 111 cabinet photographs, 83–6 cabinet views (view scraps), 121 Cadby, Carine, 185 Cadby, Will, 185 Cadell, Robert, 23 calotypes, 7, 9–10, 11–13, 56, 171 Cambodia, 92, 93 camera obscura, 3–6, 7, 13–14 Camera Work, 183, 186, 187, 189 cameras, 121, 146, 167–8, 175–8, 177 for carte-de-visite photographs, 73 early history, 3–4, 13, 37–8 miniature, 111 Cameron, Charles Hay, 163 Cameron, David Young, 168 Cameron, Jeanie, 170 Cameron, Julia Margaret, 163–4 Sir John Herschel, 10 Thomas Carlyle, 163–4, 163 Canada, 109 Carey, Evelyn, 147–9 Constructing the Central Girder, 147, 149

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Index Inch Garvie and Fife – Bird’s Eye View, 147, 148 Queensferry Columns, Looking Through Bridge, 147, 148 Carlyle, Thomas, 163–4, 163 Carrick, William, 90, 100–3 Abacus Seller, 101, 101 Fishmonger, 101 The Sower, 102, 102 Carroll, Lewis, 159 cartes-de-visite, 73–5, 78, 79–86, 80–3 Cartier-Bresson, Henri, 168 Cavaye, Stanley, 141 Caw, James, 44, 171 Cay, John, 32, 33, 48 Charles Edward, Prince, 49 chiaroscuro, 31 children as subjects, 76, 81 China, 93–4, 111 Clark, William Donaldson, 62–4, 118 The Cowgate and George IV Bridge, Edinburgh, 63, 64 The National Gallery and the Royal Institution, 62, 63, 63 Claudet, Antoine, 15 Coburn, Alvin Langdon, 190 Cockburn, Henry, 115 collodion positive, 69–70, 72–3, 73 collodion-albumen process, 62–3 collotype printing process, 128 colour, 128, 172 composite images, 162–3, 172 composition, 29–30, 103–5, 116–17, 151, 154–5 conflict and controversy, 155, 157, 162 contra jour, 40, 97 Cook, Thomas, 115 costumes, 76, 79 Crooke, William, 178, 184 Unknown Woman, 178, 179 cropping, 31 cyanotype, 9 Cyprus, 100 Daguerre, Louis Jacques Mandé, 3, 5–6, 8, 15 daguerrotypes, 3, 6–7, 9, 11, 14–18, 56, 70 Dallmeyer, J. H., 121 Davidson, Thomas, 13, 14, 37 Davis, Jefferson, 90, 91, 109 Davis, Varina Howell, 90, 91, 109

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203

Davison, George, 184 Davy, Humphrey, 5 Day, F. Holland, 184 dead people as subjects, 80–1, 108 Della Porta, Battista, 3 Demanchy, Robert, 185, 186 Disruption, the, 23–4, 28, 40; see also Disruption painting under Hill, D. O. Dodgson, Charles, 159 Dougan, R. O., 190 Driffield, Vero Charles, 178 Drummond, David Thomas Ker, 61–2, 61 Loch Earn, 62, 62 dry collodion process, 61 dry glass plates, 146 Duboscq, Louis Jules, 70 Dudgeon, John, 111 book How to Take Wonderful Photographs, 111 Dumfries, 16 Dunlop, James, 48, 51, 52, 53, 92 Strada Britanica, Malta, 51, 52 Dunlop (Monteith), Frances, 52 Sir James Dunlop, 52, 53 Dyce, William, 161–2 Pegwell Bay: A Recollection of October 5th, 1858, 161–2 dyeing, 4–5 Eastlake, Elizabeth (Elizabeth Rigby), 34–5, 35, 88, 155, 156, 161 Eastman, George, 175–7 Ebsworth, Joseph, 14–15 View from the top of the Scott Monument, 15 Edinburgh, 57, 63, 138–43 Cockburn Street, 141 fire of 1824 in High Street, 6 Greyfriars Churchyard, 37, 57 Holyrood Palace, 6 Rock House, 24, 27, 28, 38, 128, 137–8, 190 St James Square/St James Centre, 141 Scott Monument, 32, 35, 36, 130 Edinburgh Calotype Club, 32, 47–9, 52, 88, 92 Edinburgh Improvement Trust, 139 Edinburgh Photographic Society, 87, 88, 92–3, 155 Edwards, John, 15–16 Ellen’s Isle, 117, 124

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Elliot, Andrew, 47, 187 Emerson, Peter Henry, 128 engineering, 134, 143–5, 146–50 Ettrick Shepherd, the (James Hogg), D. O. Hill illustrations for, 23 Eugene, Frank, 184 Evans, Frederick H., 184 exhibitions, 34, 64, 65, 87, 92–3, 111, 117, 157, 181–3; see also Glasgow International Exhibition (1901) and under Photographic Society of Scotland exposure times, 5, 8, 56, 62–3, 97, 118, 146, 177, 178

Glasgow Institute for the Fine Arts, 181–3 Glasgow International Exhibition (1901), 61, 157, 178, 181–5, 182, 186 Glasgow Photographic Society, 87–8 Glasgow School of Art, 170 Glasgow and West of Scotland Amateur Photographic Association, 183 Gordon, Alexander, 134, 149 Grant, John, 81 Gray, John Miller, 47, 56 Great Exhibition (1851), 157 Greatrex, John Henry, 85 group photographs, 84–5

Faed, Thomas, 172 From Dawn to Sunset, 172, 172 Fairbairn, James, 39, 40 Female School of Art, 157 Fenton, Roger, 131 Valley of the Shadow of Death, 131 Fergus, John, 76–7, 84 Unknown Woman, 84, 85 ferrotype (tintype), 70, 73, 74 Fleeming, Clementina Elphinstone see Hawarden, Clementina Fleming, Sandford, 109 forgery, 85 Forth Bridge, 146–50 Friedrich, Caspar David, 167 Frith, Francis, 128 Fulhame, Elizabeth, 4–5 Fulhame, Thomas, 4 Furlong, William, 12 Fyfe, Andrew, 12–13

half-tone printing, 180–1 Hall, Elizabeth Johnstone, 38–9, 39 Hampton, William, 99 Hannavy, John, 55, 96, 191 Hardie, Fred, 123 Hawarden, Clementina (Clementina Elphinstone Fleeming), 157–61 untitled photographs, 157–61, 158, 160 Heden, Seymour, 159 Henneman, Nicolaas, 172 Herschel, John, 9, 10, 11 Hill, Alexander, 62 Hill, Amelia Robertson Paton, 25; see also Disruption painting under Hill, David Octavius Hill, David Octavius, 21–44, 22, 26, 27, 87, 102, 138, 156, 172, 186–9 and Robert Adamson, 21, 23–4, 28–9, 34, 43 James Craig Annan and, 138, 166, 168–70, 183, 186 Thomas Annan and, 135, 166 book illustrations, 22–3, 23 Eastlake on, 156 Thomas Keith and, 57 paintings, 6, 21, 28, 38 training, 22–3 views on composition, 29, 155 Wood and, 53 Ballochmyle Viaduct, 156 The Birdcage, 187, 188 ‘Christopher North’ (Professor Wilson), 186 The Dennistoun Monument with D. O. Hill, his Nieces and the Gravedigger, 37, 37

Gainsborough, Thomas, 76 Gardner, Alexander, 90, 106–9 Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter, Gettysburg, July 1863, 108, 108 The Photographic Sketchbook of the War, 107, 108 President Abraham Lincoln, 90, 91, 106 Scouts and Guides to the Army of the Potomac, 107, 107 Gellie, William, 120 Gemma-Frisius, Reinerus, 3 Gernsheim, Helmut and Alison, 4, 21, 29, 103 Gilchrist, Elizabeth, 79 Glasgow, 15, 16, 135–7, 183 water supply, 143–6

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Index Disruption painting (The First General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, Signing the Act of Separation and Deed of Demission at Tanfield, Edinburgh, 23 May 1843), 21–5, 22, 24, 28, 61, 156; prints of, 25, 135 Dr Munro, 186 Edinburgh Ale, 25–6, 26 Edinburgh Old and New from the Castle, 156 Elizabeth Johnstone Hall, Newhaven Fishwife, 38–9, 39 English Yachtsmen and Newhaven Fishermen, 40 Fishergate, North Street, St Andrews, 42, 42, 187 Fishwives Reading a Letter, Newhaven, 40 Horae Subsecivae, 43, 44 Hugh Miller, 32, 33 James Linton, his Boat and Bairns, 40, 41 John Gibson Lockhart, 186 Lady Ruthven, 186 A Lane in Newhaven, Fishwives at Home, 40–2, 41 Mann Sisters, 27, 28 The Minnow Pool, 187 The Morning After ‘He greatly daring dined’, 26, 27 Mrs Jameson, 186, 187 Mrs Rigby, 35, 36, 159–61, 170, 186 The Pastor’s Visit, 39–40, 40 Professor George Moir, 48, 49 Rev. David Thomas Ker Drummond, 61 Reverend Thomas Henshaw Jones, 30–1, 31 A Reverie, 34, 35 The Scott Monument seen from Princes Street, 35, 36 Sheriff John Cay, 32, 33 Sir David Brewster, 11 Sir John Steell, 32, 32 Hogg, James (the Ettrick Shepherd), D. O. Hill illustrations for, 23 Holbein, Hans, 170 holidays, 84 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 71 Hopkinson, Tom, 100 Horner, Francis, 30, 30 Horsburgh, John, 83 Howie, James, 15, 16

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205

Howie, James Jun., 79 Miss Gilchrist, 79 humour, 26, 72 Hurd, Robert, 191 Hurter, Ferdinand, 178 ideals, 154–5 Ilford, 180 India, 105–6 industry, 134 Innes, Cosmo, 48, 111 The Old Bridge and Castle at Inverness, 49, 51 International Exhibition (London, 1862), 157 Inverness, 49, 51 Italy, 51, 92, 103 Jackson, Magnus, 78, 112 Jackson, Thomas, 112 Jameson, Anna, 186 Japan, 111 Japanese art, 170 Japanese Photographic Society, 111 Jerusalem, 18 jewellery, 86, 87 Jones, Thomas Henshaw, 30–1, 31 kaleidoscope, 70 Käsebier, Gertrude, 184 Katrine, Loch see Loch Katrine Keiley, Joseph T., 184 Keith, Alexander, 18, 56, 92 Keith, George Skene, 17–18, 56, 92 Jerusalem, Mosque of Omar, 18 Keith, Thomas, 17, 55–60, 183–4, 190–1 Carvings at Holyrood Abbey, 57, 59 Doorway of St Oran’s Chapel, Iona, 57 Old Houses, Fisherrow, 57, 58 Palace of Holyroodhouse, 57 Reid’s Close, 57, 58 Kemp, George Meikle, 130 Kinnear, C. G. H., 146 Kirk, John, 112 Klíc, Karl, 166 Knox, John, 170 Kodak, 175–7 Lauder, James Eckford, 53 Lawson, Julie, 157–8 Le Gray, Gustave, 56, 117 lenses, 121, 177

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The Photography of Victorian Scotland

lenticular stereoscope, 70–1, 71 Lincoln, Abraham, 90, 91, 106 Linked Ring, The, 184–5 Linlithgow, 38 Linton, James, 40, 41 lithographic printing, 128 Livingstone, David, 112 Loch Katrine, 115, 116, 117, 124, 130, 131, 170–1 and Glasgow water supply, 143–5, 145 Lockhart, John Gibson, 186 Low, Claude, 179 Unknown Woman, 179, 180 Low brothers Unknown Man, 74 McCosh, John, 105 McCraw, William, 48 McCulloch, Horatio, 62 Loch Katrine, 171 Macdonald, Ann, 25 Macdonald, Margaret, 170 Macdonald, Robert, 23 MacFarlan, Patrick, 24 MacGillivray, James Pittendrigh, 31 McGlashon, Alexander, 43, 128 Horae Subsecivae, 43, 44 MacGregor, John, 100, 103 machinery, photographs of, 85 Macintosh, Charles Rennie, 170 Macintosh, Margaret, 170 McKenzie, Ray, 130, 149 MacLeay, Kenneth, 78–9 Macmillan, Duncan, 32 Macphail, James Calder, 48, 51, 92 Macpherson, Robert, 90, 103–5 General View of Gubbio, 104, 104 The Temple of Minerva, Rome, 103, 104 View of Rome from Monte Pinicio, 105 Malta, 51, 92 Manley, Leopold F., 82 Mann, Jessie, 27–8, 28, 43, 52 Marie Antoinette, 164, 165 Marquis, Daniel, 112 Mary, Queen of Scots, 83 Matheson, Mary Jane, 65 The Angler at Rest, 65 Group from Servants Hall, 65 A Picnic in the Glen, 65 Maxwell, James Clerk, 72 Maxwell, William Stirling, 171–2 medallions, 80

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Melville, Ronald Leslie, 164 Marie Antoinette, 164, 165 Michaelson, Katherine, 191 microscope slides, 111 Miller, Hugh, 32, 33 Miller, James, 26, 27 Minto, C. S., 191 mirrors, 159 Moffat, John, 79 Moir, George, 48, 49, 54, 92 Monro, Alexander, 186 Monteith (Dunlop), Frances, 52 Sir James Dunlop, 52, 53 Montgomery, James Francis, 48, 49 Bear Gates at Traquair House, 49, 50 Head of West Bow, 49, 50 Morris, William, 150 Morrison-Low, Alison, 14 Munro, Dr see Monro Munro, John, 16, 17 Murray, John, 105 Panorama of the West Face of the Taj Mahal, 105 Napier, Mark, 48 Nasmyth, Alexander, 22, 170 Nasmyth, James, 22, 25, 27 negatives, manipulation of, 54, 162 Neven du Mont, Mark, 190 New Zealand, 112 Newbery, Francis, 170 newspaper production, 180–1 Niépce, Joseph Nicéphore, 5–6 View from the Window at Le Gras, 5 Normand, Tom, 192–3 North, Christopher, 186 Notman, William, 90, 109–10 Eminent Women, 109 Jefferson Davis and his wife, Montreal, 90, 91, 109 The Stuart Family Picnic, Pullman’s Island, New York, 1872, 109–10, 110 Orkney, 60 Ovendon, Richard, 97, 100 paintings photographs and, 30–2, 35, 76, 83, 95, 157–62, 167, 171–2 photographs of, 135, 164, 171–2 Palgrave, Anne (Mrs Rigby), 35, 36, 159, 161, 170

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Index paper, 9, 69, 178–80 patents, 8, 11, 15, 68, 70 Paton, Amelia Robertson, 25; see also Disruption painting under Hill, D. O. Paton, James, 74 Photo-Secession, 184 Photographic Society of London, 157 Photographic Society of Scotland, 16, 52, 56, 64, 87, 88, 155, 164 exhibitions, 17, 43, 64, 78, 87, 117, 151, 162, 163 photographs collections, 141, 190, 191–2 reproduction of, 99–100, 180–1 photography chemicals used in, 4–5, 9, 12, 28, 54, 123 early history, 3–13 origin of word, 9 and painting, 37, 156 see also under painting photogravure, 166, 170 photojournalism, 97 photomontage, 82 Pithie, Alexander Unknown Child, 77 platinotypes, 178 Playfair, Hugh Lyon, 12, 13 Playfair, William, 34, 63 Ponton, Mungo, 12 pornography, 72, 85 post mortem photographs, 80–1, 81 postcards, 106, 127–8 Pradd, Mary, 99 prices, 74, 127 printing processes, 9–10, 128 printing works, 75–6 prisons, 85 production work, 73–4, 75–6, 120, 127 props, 32, 34, 76, 159 publishing, 128; see also book production Pullman, George, and family, 109–10 Raeburn, Henry, 29, 30–1, 32 Francis Horner MP, 30, 30 Ralston, Peter Unknown Woman, 73 reflectors, 76 Rejlander, Oscar, 157, 162 The Two Ways of Life, 162 Rembrandt van Rijn, 29, 32

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207

Reynolds, Joshua, 76, 154 Rigby (Palgrave), Anne, 35, 36, 159, 161, 170 Rigby (Eastlake), Elizabeth, 34–5, 35, 88, 155, 156, 161 Robinson, Henry Peach, 162, 164, 185 Dawn and Sunset, 172 Fading Away, 162 Robison, John, 12 Rock House see under Edinburgh Rodger, Thomas, 65, 77–8 Ross, Henrietta, 17, 18, 64–5 A Photographer in his Study, 17, 64 Ross, Horatio, 16–17 Craigdarcourt, 17, 18 Hoddy and John Munro fishing at Flaipool, 1847, 16, 17 Ross, Horatio Jun., 16, 17 Ross, James, 16 Unknown Man, 7 Royal Geographical Society, 93 Royal Photographic Society, 184, 190 Royal Scottish Academy, 23, 31, 34 Royal Scottish Society of Arts, 12, 13, 77 Royal Society of Edinburgh, 12 Russia, 100–2 Ruthven, Mary, 186 St Andrews, 11, 12, 13 Saltire Society, 190 Schaaf, Larry J., 4 Scheele, Carl Wilhelm, 4 school class photographs, 85 Schott, Kaspar, 3 Schwarz, Heinrich, 187–8 scientific subjects, 85 Scott, Walter, 83, 115, 116, 130, 131, 132, 170–1 Annan illustrations for, 151, 152 D. O. Hill illustrations for, 23 Scottish National Photography Collection (SNPC), 191–2 Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 191–2, 193 Scottish Society for the History of Photography (SSHoP), 191, 192, 193 Senebier, Jean, 4 shutter mechanisms, 118, 146, 177–8 Silvy, Camille, 117 River Scene, France, 117

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208

The Photography of Victorian Scotland

Simpson, James Young, 56 sitters, 15 slum clearance, 135, 141, 146 Smart, Francis, 131–2 Smith, Adolphe, 97 Smyth, Charles Piazzi, 71, 110–11 Teneriffe: An Astronomer’s Experiment, or Specialities of a Residence above the Clouds, 71, 110–11; Alta Vista Observatory, Teneriffe, 72 Smyth, Jessica, 111 SNPC (Scottish National Photography Collection), 191–2 social commentary, 39, 97, 107–9 societies and clubs, 12, 47, 87–8 SSHoP (Scottish Society for the History of Photography), 191, 192, 193 Stapp, William F., 108 status, 154–5, 157 Steell, John, 32, 32 Steichen, Edward, 184 stereoscopic photography and viewers, 70–2, 71, 72, 111, 112, 116, 118, 121 Stevenson, Sara, 17, 32, 43, 135, 191, 192, 193 Stewart, George, and Co., 127 Stewart, John, 48 Stieglitz, Alfred, 167, 183, 184, 186, 187 Winter, Fifth Avenue, 184 Strand, Paul, 187, 188 Tir a’Mhurain, 188 Strong, Roy, 43 studios, 15, 15, 76–7, 84 Sutcliffe, Frank Meadow, 184–5

Tennent, Robert, 48, 50 Kitchen Hut Gnarkeet Station, Port Phillip, 50, 52, 92 Terras, Robert, 163 Thomson, John (FRGS), 90, 92–100, 111 Beggars, Foochow, 96, 96 Bronze Temple, Wan-Show-Shan, Peking, 93–4, 94 A Canton Junk, 95, 95 The Crawlers, 99, 99 London Nomades, 97–9, 98 Prea Sat Ling Poun, 93, 93 Recruiting Sergeants at Westminster, 97, 98 Street Life in London, 97, 99–100, 180 Upper Bridge, Foochow, 94 Thomson, John (partner of Ross), 16 Unknown Man, 7 time, representing, 161–2, 172 tintype (ferrotype), 70, 73, 74 Tolstoy, Leo, 102 tourism, 90, 112, 115, 131–2 Traquair House, 49, 50 tripods, 146 Tunny, James Good, 34, 78, 100 Turner, J. M. W., 171 Loch Katrine, 171

Talbot, William Henry Fox, 3, 7–9, 11–13, 68, 129–30, 172 Brewster and, 10, 11, 13, 14, 24, 47, 48 Leaf of a Plant, 8 Loch Katrine, 131, 131 The Pencil of Nature, 130 Sun Pictures in Scotland, 129–30 talbotypes see calotypes Tay Bridge, 146 Taylor, Andrew and George, 80 carte-de-visite, 80 Taylor, Roger, 81 Tennent, Hugh Lyon, 48, 49–50 Unknown Man, Fairlie, 49–50, 51

Walker, William, 59–60 Wane, Marshall, 84 war photography, 107–8, 131 water supply, 143–6 Wedgwood, Josiah, 5 Wedgwood, Thomas, 5 Westhofen, Wilhelm, 150 wet collodion process, 56, 61, 68–70, 95, 111, 120, 146 Wheatstone, Charles, 70 Whistler, James Abbott McNeill, 35, 159–61 Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (Portrait of the Painter’s Mother), 35, 159–61, 161, 170

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Valentine, George, 112, 125, 127 Valentine, James, 112, 115, 124–8, 171 Ellen’s Isle, Loch Katrine, 124, 124 High Street, Wigtown, 126 Valentine, William, 125, 127 Victoria, Queen, 70, 81, 82, 115, 116, 125, 130, 131, 143, 144 view scraps, 112, 121, 126, 127

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Index Symphony in White No. 2, The Little White Girl, 159, 160 White, Clarence H., 184 White, John Forbes, 60–1, 183–4 South Porch St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, 60, 60 Wilkie, David, 38 Wilson, Andrew, 22 Wilson, George Washington, 75, 112, 115–24, 150, 171 book A Practical Guide to the Collodion Process in Photography, 116 company, 121–3 printing works, 75, 76, 120 James Valentine and, 124 Dunnottar Castle, 121, 122 Ellen’s Isle, Loch Katrine, 116, 117, 124 The Forth Bridge from the South, 150, 150 Loch of Park, Aberdeenshire, 118, 118

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Princes Street, Edinburgh, 118, 119 Queen Victoria and John Brown, 81, 82 The Silver Strand, Loch Katrine, 118, 119, 171 Tay Bridge Dundee, from the South, 120, 120 The Wallace Monument, 121, 122 Wilson, John, 186 women art education for, 157 as photographers, 17, 52, 64–5, 76, 157 as production workers, 76 as scientists, 4–5 Wood, John Muir, 52–5, 90–2 Landscape with Ruin, 53–4, 54 Stirling, 54–5, 55 Woodbury process, 100, 180 Zahn, Johann, 3–4 Zanzibar, 112

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