From the time that Mr. Macbeth commenced taking photographs himself, he took a keen interest in photography to the last, and only about a month before he died, he read an able, instructive, and interesting paper on the “Construction and Requirements of Portrait Art” before the members of the London and Provincial Photographic Association; and that paper should be in the possession, and frequent perusal, of every student of photographic portraiture. Although an artist in feeling and by profession, Mr. Macbeth was no niggard in his praises of artistic photography, and I have frequently heard him expatiate lovingly on the artistic productions of Rejlander, Robinson, and Hubbard; but, like all artists, he abominated retouching, and denounced it in the strongest terms, and regretted its prevalence and practice as destructive of truth, and “truth in photography,” he used to say, “was its greatest recommendation.”
The annals of 1889—the jubilee year of published and commercial photography—commence with the record of death. On the 21st of January, Mr. John Robert Sawyer died at Naples in the 61st year of his age. Mr. Sawyer had been for many years a member of the Autotype Company, and his foresight and indefatigability were largely instrumental in making that Company a commercial success. It was anything but a success from the time that it was commenced by the late Mr. Winsor and Mr. J. R. Johnson, but from the moment that Mr. J. R. Sawyer became “director of works,” the company rapidly became a flourishing concern, and possesses now a world-wide reputation. Mr. Sawyer was one of the early workers in photography, and for several years conducted a photographic business in the city of Norwich. It was there that circumstances induced him to give his attention to some form of permanent photography with the view of employing it to illustrate a work on the carving and sculpture in Norwich Cathedral, particularly the fine work in the roof of the nave. Mr. Sawyer naturally turned his attention, in the first place, to the autotype process, but it was then in its infancy, and the price prohibitory. The collotype process then became his hope and refuge, but that also was in its infancy, and not practised in England. Mr. Sawyer therefore started for Berlin early in 1869, and there met a certain Herr Ghémoser, a clever expert in the collotype process, from whom he obtained valuable information and working instructions. On his return home, Mr. Sawyer laboured at the collotype process until he overcame most of its difficulties, and on January 1st, 1871, he entered into partnership with Mr. Walter Bird, and removed to London with the intention of making the collotype process a feature in the business. Messrs. Sawyer and Bird commenced their London experiences in Regent Street, but on January 1st, 1872, they entered into an agreement with the Autotype Fine Art Company to work the collotype process as a branch of their business. Meanwhile, another partner, Mr. John Spencer, had joined the firm, and at the end of that year Messrs. Spencer, Sawyer, Bird and Co. purchased the Autotype patents, plant, and stock at Ealing Dene, and all its interest in the wholesale trade; and, in 1874, they bought up the whole of the Fine Art business, including the stock in Rathbone Place, and became the Autotype Company.
The great photographic feature of this year was the Convention held on August 19th in St. James’s Hall, Regent Street, London, in celebration of the jubilee of practical photography, which was inaugurated by the delivery of an address by the president, Mr. Andrew Pringle. The address was a fairly good résumé of all that had been done for the advancement of photography during the past fifty years.
The exhibition of photographs was somewhat of a failure; little was shown that possessed any historical interest, and that little was contributed by myself. There was a considerable display of apparatus of almost every description, but there was nothing that had not been seen, or could have been seen, in the shops of the exhibitors.
The papers that were read were of considerable interest, and imparted no small amount of information, especially Mr. Thos. R. Dallmeyer’s on “False Rendering of Photographic Images by the Misapplication of Lenses”; Mr. C. H. Bothamley’s on “Orthochromatic Photography with Gelatine Plates”; Mr. Thomas Bolas’s on “The Photo-mechanical Printing Methods as employed in the Jubilee Year of Photography”; but by far the most popular, wonderful, and instructive, was Professor E. Muybridge’s lecture, with illustrations, on “The Movements of Animals.” The sight of the formidable batteries of lenses was startling enough, but when the actions of the horse, and other animals, were shown in the “Zoopraxiscope,” the effect on the sense of sight was both astounding and convincing, and I began to marvel how artists could have lived and laboured in the wrong direction for so many years, especially when the lecturer showed that a prehistoric artist had scratched on a bone a rude but truthful representation of an animal in motion. Both the sight and intelligence of that prehistoric artist must have been keener than the senses of animal painters of the nineteenth century.
Taking it all in all, the Jubilee Convention was an immense success, and brought photographers and amateurs to London from the most distant parts of the country. Looking round the Hall on the opening night, and scanning the features of those present, I was coming to the conclusion that I was the oldest photographer present, when I espied Mr. Baynham Jones, a man of eighty-three winters, and certainly the oldest amateur photographer living; so I willingly ceded the honour of seniority to him, and as soon as he espied me he clambered over the rails to come and sit at my side and talk over the past, and quite unknown to many present, aspects and difficulties of photography. Mr. Baynham Jones was an enthusiastic photographer from the very first, for in 1839, as soon as Daguerre’s process was published, he made himself a camera out of a cigar-box and the lens of his opera-glass, and, being unable to obtain a Daguerreotype plate in the country, he cut up a silver salver and worked away on a solid silver plate until he succeeded in making a Daguerreotype picture. Mr. Baynham Jones was not the first photographer in this country, for the Rev. J. B. Reade preceded him by about two years; but I have not the slightest doubt of his being the first Daguerreotypist in England, and in that jubilee year of 1889 he was working with gelatine plates and films, and enthusiastic enough to come all the way from Cheltenham to London to attend the meetings of the Jubilee Convention of Photography.
With this brief allusion to the doings and attractions of the Jubilee Convention, I fear I must bring my reminiscences of photography to a close; but before doing so I feel it incumbent on me to call attention to the fact that two years after celebrating the jubilee of photography we should, paradoxical as it may appear, celebrate its centenary, for in 1791 the first photographic picture that ever was made, seen, or heard tell of, was produced by Thomas Wedgwood, and though he was unable to fix it and enable us to look upon that wonder to-day, the honour of being the first photographer, in its truest sense, is unquestionably due to an Englishman. Thomas Wedgwood made photographic pictures on paper, and there they remained until light or time obliterated them; whereas J. H. Schulze, a German physician, only obtained impressions of letters on a semi-liquid chloride of silver in a bottle, and at every shake of the hand the meagre impression was instantly destroyed. If we consider such men as Niépce, Reade, Daguerre, and Fox Talbot the fathers of photography, we cannot but look upon Thomas Wedgwood as the Grand Father, and the centenary of his first achievement should be celebrated with becoming honour as the English centenary of photography.
CHRONOLOGICAL RECORD
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