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David Octavius Hill & Robert Adamson
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David Octavius Hill
(From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia)
David Octavius Hill was born in 1802
in Perth. His father, a bookseller and publisher, helped to reestablish
Perth Academy and David was educated there as were his brothers. When his
older brother Alexander joined the publishers Blackwood's in Edinburgh,
David went there to study at the School of Design. He learnt lithography
and produced Sketches of Scenery in Perthshire which was published as an
album of views. His landscape paintings were shown in the Institution for
the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Scotland, and he was among the artists
dissatisfied with the Institution who established a separate Scottish
Academy in 1829 with the assistance of his close friend Henry Cockburn. A
year later Hill took on unpaid secretarial duties. He sought commissions
in book illustration, with four sketches being used to illustrate The
Glasgow and Garnkirk Railway Prospectus in 1832, and went on to provide
illustrations for editions of Walter Scott and Robert Burns. In 1836 the
Royal Scottish Academy began to pay him a salary as secretary, and with
this security he married his fiancée Ann Macdonald in the following year,
but she was not strong and after the birth of their daughter she became an
invalid. He continued to produce illustrations and to paint landscapes on
commission.
Hill was present at the Disruption Assembly in 1843 when over 450
ministers walked out of the Church of Scotland assembly and down to
another assembly hall to found the Free Church of Scotland. He decided to
record the dramatic scene with the encouragement of his friend Lord
Cockburn and another spectator, the physicist Sir David Brewster who
suggested using the new invention, photography, to get likenesses of all
the ministers present. Brewster was himself experimenting with this
technology which only dated back to 1839, and he introduced Hill to
another enthusiast, Robert Adamson. Hill and Adamson took a series of
photographs of those who had been present and of the setting. The 5 foot x
11 foot 4 inches (1.53m x 3.45m) painting was eventually completed in
1866.
Their collaboration, with Hill providing skill in composition and
lighting, and Adamson considerable sensitivity and dexterity in handling
the camera, proved extremely successful, and they soon broadened their
subject matter. Adamson's studio, "Rock House", on Calton Hill in
Edinburgh became the centre of their photographic experiments. Using the
Calotype process, they produced a wide range of portraits depicting
well-known Scottish luminaries of the time, including Hugh Miller, both in
the studio and in outdoors settings, often amongst the elaborate tombs in
Greyfriars Kirkyard.
They photographed local and Fife landscapes and urban scenes, including
images of the Scott Monument under construction in Edinburgh. As well as
the great and the good, they photographed ordinary working folk,
particularly the fishermen of Newhaven, and the fishwives who carried the
fish in creels the 3 miles (5 km) uphill to the city of Edinburgh to sell
them round the doors, with their cry of "Caller herrin" (fresh herring).
They produced several groundbreaking "action" photographs of soldiers and
- perhaps their most famous photograph - two priests walking side by side.
Their partnership produced around 3000 prints, but was cut short after
only four years due to the ill health and untimely death of Adamson in
1848. The calotypes faded under sunlight, so had to be kept in albums, and
though Hill continued the studio for some months, he became less active
and abandoned the studio, though he continued to sell prints of the
photographs and to use them as an aid for composing paintings. In 1862 he
remarried, to the sculptress Amelia Paton, and around that time took up
photography again, but the results were more static and less successful
than his collaboration with Adamson. He was badly affected by the death of
his daughter and his work slowed. In 1866 he finished the Disruption
picture which received wide acclaim, though many of the participants had
died by then. The photographer F.C. Annan produced fine reduced facsimiles
of the painting for sale throughout the Free Church, and a group of
subscribers raised £1,200 to purchase the painting for the church. In 1869
illness forced him to give up his post as secretary to the R.S.A., and he
died in May 1870.
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DAVID OCTAVIUS HILL.
Robert Adamson, c. 1843.
Calotype. Gemsheim Collection, Humanities Research Center, University of
Texas, Austin.
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Robert Adamson
(From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia)
Robert Adamson, (April 26, 1821 – January 14, 1848) was a Scottish pioneer
photographer.
Adamson was born in St. Andrews, Scotland, he was hired in 1843 by David
Octavius Hill (1802-1870), a painter of romantic Scottish landscapes. He
was commissioned to make a group portrait of the 470 clergymen who founded
the Free Church of Scotland. Hill required calotypes from which he would
paint. Distinguished persons from many fields came to be photographed by
the partners. Together they made more than 1,000 portraits and numerous
views of Edinburgh between 1843 and 1848, until Adamson died at the age of
26. Hill returned to painting and the partners' great work was not
rediscovered until 1872.
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Disruption Group: Rev. Dr John
Bruce, Rev. John Sym, Rev. Dr David Walsh
c. 1843
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George Meikle Kemp
c. 1843
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The Reverend Thomas Henshaw Jones
1843
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Hugh Miller
1843-47
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John Henning and Female Audience
c. 1844
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Masons working on a carved Griffin for the Scott Monument
c. 1844
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Alexander Rutherford, William Ramsey, and John Liston
c. 1844-1845
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Highland Guard
c. 1844-45
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Glynn, an Actress and Reader
c. 1845
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Life Study, Dr. George Bell
c. 1845
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East Gable of the Cathedral and St. Rule's Tower, St. Andrews
1846
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James Drummond
c. 1846
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Mrs Elizabeth Johnstone, Newhaven
c. 1846
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Sergeant of the 42nd Gordon Highlanders reading the Orders of the Day
April 1846
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Lady Ruthven, ca. 1845
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Newhaven Fishwives, ca. 1845
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The Fairy Tree at Colinton, ca. 1846
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Photographic portrait of Miss Elizabeth Chalmers and her brother David
Chalmers. 1843-1847
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Part of photographic panorama of Edinburgh from the Castle, looking to the
East. 1843-1847
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The Rev. James Brewster of Craig
1843
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Rev. Dr. Abraham Capadose
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Revd. James Julius Wood, Greyfriars' Church
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James Linton
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Lady E. Eastlake, 1843-1848
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The Letter
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Ayr Presbytery
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Rev. Dr. John Macdonald
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Arbroath Presbytery Group
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Reverend Jaffray and Dhanjiobai Nauroji
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D. O. Hill
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The General Assembly Hall of the Free Church, Edinburgh 1844
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Miss Elizabeth Rigby 1845
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Newhaven Fishermen 1845
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John Henning as "Edie Ochiltree" 1847
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