D.O. Hill and Early Photography: Or: A Guest Post by Alison Bacon:

Most people know that Fox Talbot invented photography. Not so many are aware that its first real flowering took place north of the border. Alison Bacon unravels the events that brought an artist into the frame at just the right moment.

The Scottish connection

In 1839 William Henry Fox Talbot found a way of capturing an image on light-sensitive paper and rendering it stable. The negative/positive process allowed any number of prints to be produced from a single ‘calotype’, and so modern photography was born. 

With competitors snapping at his heels, Fox Talbot was quick to protect his invention with patents, but he entrusted the details to his close friend Sir David Brewster. Brewster, an eminent if irascible scientist (now best known for inventing the kaleidoscope) was at that time Principal of St. Andrews University.

St. Andrew's Cathedral & Rule's Tower

Brewster gathered around him a group of academics and townsmen, all interested in the new science of making images from light. One of these was John Adamson, a local doctor. John enlisted the help of his younger brother Robert, a talented engineer dogged by ill-health. After many false starts, the Adamson brothers managed to replicate Fox Talbot’s methods. When the inventor saw their results, he agreed not to extend his patents to Scotland and allowed Robert Adamson to set up a photography business in Edinburgh.

Enter the artist

In the spring of 1843, Edinburgh was galvanised by a crisis in the Church of Scotland over the right of congregations to appoint their own ministers. Earlier that year, appeals to the English parliament to uphold this right had finally failed, and Thomas Chalmers, the radical church leader, called on the General Assembly to assert the church’s independence from the state. On the 18th of May, only a week after Adamson’s arrival, Chalmers and some 450 ministers left the Assembly as it sat in Edinburgh and reconvened to form a new Free Church of Scotland.  This Act of Disruption was followed five days later by the formal signing of a Deed of Demission. Among the many onlookers was David Octavius Hill. 

Hill and Daughter

Hill was an established landscape artist who also held the position of Secretary to the newly formed Royal Scottish Academy. Like many others he was impressed by the moral courage of Chalmers and his followers. He offered to produce a commemorative painting, to include as many portraits as possible of the ministers who had signed the Deed. But his problem was one of time. To create portraits from life he needed to sketch the subjects, most of whom would leave Edinburgh within a few days.
Brewster was also present at the signing and learned of Hill’s intention. Seeing a perfect opportunity to promote Adamson’s work, he suggested Hill could eliminate the need for sketches by using calotypes instead  and persuaded him to visit Adamson’s studio on Calton Hill. Despite Hill’s initial scepticism, Adamson’s demonstration of the new technique quickly won him over.

Hill and Adamson

Although twenty years his senior, Hill struck up an immediate friendship with Adamson and after a few weeks he and his daughter moved in to share the Rock House studio. Hill’s wife having died a few years earlier, the two men and a five year-old must have made an odd household in Victorian Edinburgh.

'Edinburgh Ale' (1843) Left to Right - Ballantyne, Bell & Hill

 But Hill was a key figure in society. He saw that the calotype was much more than an artist’s short-cut and soon had Edinburgh ablaze with the notion of sitting for this new kind of portrait. The Demission painting was put on hold as writers, churchmen, actors and visiting dignitaries all rolled up to have a calotype taken.

The experience of sitting in bright sunlight for over a minute, as was then required, could be an ordeal, but Hill’s social and artistic skills produced results that were both pleasing and naturalistic. By July of 1843, Hill and Adamson prints were appearing in a gallery owned by Hill’s brother, and early the following year were exhibited at the RSA.

King Fisher

This dynamic and creative partnership lasted for four years and in that time Hill and Adamson captured around three thousand images taken not just in the studio but also around Edinburgh, St. Andrews and the fishing village of Newhaven. Some rate as significant works of art, others as social documents. Many are both. A large number can now de viewed online. (The images reproduced here are all from the National Galleries of Scotland Flickr photostream.)

The end of the affair

The partnership might have gone on to even greater achievements, but late in 1847 Adamson, still only twenty six, fell seriously ill. He went home to St. Andrews where he died in January 1848. By his own admission, Hill had never been interested in the technical side of the calotype. After Adamson’s death he failed to find another partner and withdrew to his original career as artist, teacher and administrator.

In the course of his public life, D.O. Hill experienced a series of deep personal losses, from the death of his wife Ann in 1841, to that of his ‘amiable friend’ Adamson and finally, in 1860, the loss of his beloved daughter Chattie. But in 1862 he finally married Amelia Paton, an artist, sculptor and family friend who supported him in his final years. With her help and encouragement he completed the Disruption painting begun almost twenty years earlier and in a touching anachronism included in it both himself and Robert Adamson, immediately recognisable as the man with the camera.

Hill's Memorial

 Hill’s love affair with photography turned out to be short-lived, but his impact was immense. It could be argued that he lacked the technical know-how of a photographer, but it was his energy, vision and compositional skill that placed photography on the artistic and cultural stage. Any good history of photography will make reference to the Hill & Adamson story. Further links and references can be found here.

Alison Bacon graduated from St. Andrews University a lifetime ago. Since then she has been a librarian, an IT trainer and more recently a writer. Back in the seventies she had a mild flirtation with early photography. Her current obsession with D.O. Hill looks like being the real deal. 

A huge thanks to Alison for this super post, writing about a subject I find fascinating, and that makes the Victorian period one of the best in history to study - photography.