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| You are in: National Portrait Gallery | Search the collection | Room 27 | |||||||||
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Room 27 Science and Technology Science and technology affected the lives of the Victorians to an unprecedented degree. The harnessing of steam, and the development of advanced manufacturing processes, made Britain the world's leading industrial nation. The most visible and dynamic manifestation of technological change, the railway, was already spreading across the country when Victoria came to the throne. But its extensions into a national network, transforming the economic and social life of the country, belongs to the middle decades of the century. Experimental discoveries by scientists like Michael Faraday led to the foundation of modern chemical and electrical industries. Another new technology, photography, gave to portraiture itself a further means of recording likenesses. While technology transformed the day-to-day existence of Victorians, scientific theories changed their perception of Man's place in the natural world. The publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859 crystallised doubts in the Biblical account of Man's creation. In the public mind, at least, science and religion were in conflict and certainties which had held for centuries were open to question. Victorian Portrait Photography The earliest photographic processes, the daguerreotype and the calotype, were both used in England in the 1840s for portrait photography. The daguerreotype, invented in 1839, employed a highly polished silvered copper plate to produce a unique image. The calotype, patented by W.H. Fox Talbot in 1841, was the first negative/positive process, the basis of today's photography and capable of producing multiple prints. The greater sharpness and portability of the daguerreotype, however, made it the most popular process for commercial photography. Sealed in cases, much like miniatures, daguerreotypes quickly made the miniature painter's art redundant. Although daguerreotype portraits continued to be fashionable well into the 1850s, they were eventually overtaken by the advent of the wet collodion process using a coated glass negative. Glass proved the ideal base for the multiplication of images and the collecting of photographic portrait of eminent contemporaries became a popular pursuit. The commercial possibilities of issuing series of portraits - including many of the leading scientific figures of the day - were fully exploited by firms like Maull & Polyblank. Around 1860 the introduction of the carte-de-visite format provided a highly affordable type of portrait photograph and gave a further boost to collecting. Portraits on display |
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protection. 12 October 2008 |
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