Photograph by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 'Henning of Paisley, Sculptor and Miss Sophy Finlay, Miss Mary Watson, Miss Francis, Mrs. Orr', John Henning with six women and girls including Miss Margaret McCandlish, salted paper print from calotype negative, 1843-1847

Sepia-coloured photograph depicting a group of women crowded around a white-haired man looking at a daguerreotype

The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund.

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 partnership between Scottish painter Hill and chemist Adamson merged the art and science of photography. Initially intending to create preliminary studies for Hill’s paintings, the pair soon recognised photography’s artistic potential. With Hill’s knowledge of composition and lighting, and Adamson’s considerable sensitivity and dexterity in handling the camera, together they produced some of the most accomplished photographic portraits of their time.

RPS.1209-2018