966
reliability of their cameras under diffi cult climactic
conditions is refl ected in the fact that it was used during
Lord Elgin’s visit to China and on Livingstone’s journey
to the Zambesi in 1858.
The repute of Murray and Heath was such that their
equipment was reviewed in the Art Journal in 1859.
Their cameras were praised for both their durability
and the numerous minor technical innovations they
had introduced. The review concluded that Murray and
Heath could have “but small necessity for our praise,
yet it affords us real pleasure to add to our testimony
upon their photographic apparatus to that of the most
distinguished photographers.”
At the beginning of 1862, Murray and Heath sold
their business to Charles Heisch, Professor of Chemistry
at Middlesex Hospital. Heisch was also a keen pho-
tographer and a regular contributor to the pages of the
Photographic News. A new catalogue issued by Heisch
promised to “maintain the high character already estab-
lished by this house, more especially for Apparatus suited
to the tropical climates.” The fi rm continued to operate
under the name of Murray and Heath at 43 Piccadilly.
However, the following year, Vernon Heath started as a
full time photographic studio from the same address.
Heath operated at 43 Piccadilly between 1863 and
1876, and as Vernon Heath & Co. between 1877 and
- He was made bankrupt in early 1886, but was
working at the same studio again between 1887 and - Heath’s interest in photography began in Janu-
ary 1839 when he heard Faraday announce Daguerre
and Fox Talbot’s discoveries at the Royal Institution.
Sometime after the death of Lord Vernon in 1849, Heath
started work a professional photographer. His early pu-
pils included Dr. Livingstone and the young Prince Al-
fred, the future Duke of Edinburgh. Royal commissions
feature prominently in Heath’s career. In 1862, he was
involved in a court case with a publisher, Robert Mason
of Paternoster Row, over a disputed negative of Prince
Albert. The case, which Heath won, centred around the
number of negatives Heath had agreed to take for Mason,
who wanted to use them for carte-de-visite.
At the wedding of the Prince of Wales in March 1863,
Heath enjoyed the honour of being invited by Queen
Victoria to photograph the marriage ceremony in the
Chapel Royal at Windsor. Heath subsequently became
a friend of the Prince and Princess of Wales. He was
invited to Sandringham on several occasions, and made
£1,000 from a photograph of two of the Prince’s Indian
mastiffs. His work for the royal family continued as
late as 1887, when he was asked by Queen Victoria to
photograph her Golden Jubilee garden party at Buck-
ingham Palace.
One important technical innovation introduced by
Heath was a means of reproducing and enlarging nega-
tives. The process came about through his attempts to
ensure that he could produce enough pictures of Prince
Albert from the single negative involved in the court
case. Heath’s process involved printing a positive trans-
parency of the negative on glass instead of paper, and
then using this transparency to make more negatives.
The process, with some modifi cations, became the prin-
cipal means of enlarging negatives. Heath gave a paper
describing his technique at the Photographic Society of
London in March 1862, which was also published in the
British Journal of Photography.
Heath’s pictures included both portrait photographs
and landscapes, although he was more renowned for
the latter. His work often stemmed from high profi le
social connections. These included a request from Lady
Burdett Coutts in 1867 to picture a garden party; pho-
tographing the Landseer’s lions at the base of Nelson’s
column; and being commissioned by the Admiralty in
1865 to record details of the French fl eet visiting Ports-
mouth. Much of his best photography stemmed from
picturing Scottish landscape, often through long visits
to the estates of Scottish noblemen. After one typical
visit to the Duke of Argyll’s estate in Inverary, Heath
took a photograph of Glen Shira, which he then enlarged
to 43 × 53 inches. For this and other pictures he sent to
the Paris Exhibition in 1878, he was awarded the only
gold medal for landscape photography given to British
photographers. In his latter years, Heath was a strong
advocate of the autotype process and gave a paper at
Royal Institution on the subject in February 1874.
One unexpected admirer of Heath’s landscape work
was John Ruskin. In 1882, Ruskin wrote in reply to an
approach from Heath to view his work:
If you could know how often I have paused, in my greatest
hurries, at that recessed window in Piccadilly, and how
often I have retired from it in a state of humiliation and
wretchedness of mind, and accused fi rst the sun, and then
you, and then the nature of things, of making all one’s
past labours hopeless, you would understand the inter-
est I shall have in really seeing you. (Quoted in Vernon’s
Heath’s Recollections, 294)
Vernon Heath died on 25 October 1895, and an obitu-
ary in The Times singled out his pictures of Burnham
Beeches for particular praise.
John Plunkett
See also: Cartes-de-Visite; Stereoscopy; Victoria,
Queen and Albert, Prince Consort; Faraday, Michael;
Daguerre, Louis-Jacques-Mandé; Talbot, William
Henry Fox; and Photographic Exchange Club and
Photographic Society Club, London.Further Reading
A Catalogue of Photographic Apparatus, Chemicals, & C, Manu-
factured and Sold by Murray and Heath, London: George
Nichols, 1862.