Sir David Brewster

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Sir David Brewster

by David Octavius Hill, and Robert Adamson
calotype, 1843
7 5/8 in. x 5 7/8 in. (194 mm x 149 mm)
Given by an anonymous donor, 1973
Primary Collection
NPG P6(10)

Sitterback to top

  • Sir David Brewster (1781-1868), Natural philosopher and academic administrator. Sitter in 19 portraits.

Artistsback to top

  • Robert Adamson (1821-1848), Pioneer photographer. Artist or producer associated with 382 portraits, Sitter in 3 portraits.
  • David Octavius Hill (1802-1870), Landscape and portrait painter; pioneer photographer. Artist or producer associated with 382 portraits, Sitter associated with 22 portraits.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Rogers, Malcolm, Camera Portraits, 1989 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 20 October 1989 - 21 January 1990), p. 21 Read entry

    The Scottish physicist Sir David Brewster was a founder member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1831), and a key figure in the early history of photography in Britain. Much of his own experimental work was devoted to optics – he invented the kaleidoscope (1816) and the lenticular stereoscope – and he was a close correspondent of Fox Talbot, inventor of the calotype, who wrote explaining the process to him in May 1841.

    It was Brewster who persuaded Robert Adamson to make a profession of calotype photography, and who introduced him to the painter D. O. Hill, with whom he worked in partnership from a studio in Edinburgh until 1847. In their photographs, ‘executed by R. Adamson under the artistic direction of D. O. Hill’, Adamson’s scientific technique is transformed by Hill’s aesthetic sensibility. The Gallery owns three albums of their finest work, presented by Hill to the Royal Academy in 1863, and given to the Gallery by an anonymous benefactor in 1973. They contain 238 prints, covering the whole range of Hill and Adamson’s work: portraits, studies of fishermen and fishwives, topographical and genre scenes.

  • Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 75

Events of 1843back to top

Current affairs

Sir Henry Cole commissions 1,000 copies of the first Christmas card, designed by John Callcott Horsley. Cole would later be instrumental in staging the Great Exhibition, and in developing science and art education in Britain.
Nelson's statue, by E.H. Bailey, is placed on top of its column in Trafalgar Square.

Art and science

The Theatre Regulations Act is passed, abolishing the privileged position of the 'major' theatres which held letters patent from the crown, allowing all theatres to perform 'legitimate' theatre.
First volume of Ruskin's Modern Painters published, praising Turner and demanding that artists should demonstrate 'truth to nature' in their work. Ruskin is a great inspiration to the Pre-Raphaelites.

International

The first experimental telegraph wire is constructed between Baltimore and Washington, using Morse code to send a message. The code, in which pulses of current deflect an electromagnet, moving a marker and producing written codes on a strip of paper, had been invented by Samuel Morse in 1838. The line officially opens in 1844.

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