Photograph by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 'Tree at Colinton', sometimes titled The Fairy Tree at Colinton, salted paper print from calotype negative, 1843-1847

Photograph of a tree, wrapped with ivy. One of fifty sepia-coloured photographs of people, places and nature studies taken in Scotland and bound in album.

Given by Sir Theodore Martin, 1869

The famous partnership and collaboration between the artist David Octavius Hill and the photographer Robert Adamson came into being originally in order to produce photographic portraits to assist Hill as a painter. The team produced a wide range of superb, valuable work and they were the first consistently and successfully employ calotype process in Great Britain.

1843 Hill was introduced to Adamson and they began to collaborate on the production of calotype portraits as reference images for the painting ‘The Signing of the Deed of Demission’ which represents 474 dignitaries. Essentially, Hill posed and arranged the individual sitters or groups while Adamson attended to the technical aspects of the exposure, processing, and printing.

Some of their most powerful images, however, were made in Scottish seashore villages and depict fishermen and women. They also photographed the architecture and monument of Scotland and made calotypes of their friends posed in medieval armour or costumes.

The pioneering partnership between Scottish painter Hill and chemist Adamson produced some of the most accomplished photographic portraits of their time. Nature studies like this are rare among their works. Ivy wrapped around the branches of what might be a dead tree, and light glittering on foliage in the background, animate the scene with life. Even the faded edges of the print add to its
enchanted appearance.

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