648
HENDERSON, ALEXANDER (1831–1913)
Canadian photographer
Alexander Henderson was born in 1831, possibly in
Press Castle, near Edinburgh, Scotland. He started pho-
tographing as an amateur a few years after emigrating
to Montreal, Quebec, in October 1855. Although he
opened a portrait studio in Montreal in 1866 or 1867,
Henderson’s portrait work was not exceptional, and
he abandoned portraiture to concentrate on landscape
studies in stereo and large-format negatives. He excelled
at exquisitely rendered landscapes, particularly winter
scenes, which he also self-published beginning in 1865.
Henderson received numerous exhibition awards in
the 1860s and 1870s. Like his contemporary William
Notman, he was widely known outside Canada. The
Canadian Pacifi c Railway Company hired him around
1885 to document construction of its line through British
Columbia, and by the early 1890s he was managing its
photographic activities. Retired from photography in
the late 1890s, Henderson died in Montreal on April 4,
- In the early 1950s his grandson disposed of the
glass negatives, stored in the basement of his home, as
garbage. Only several hundred individual prints and
albums survive in the Notman Photographic Archives
(McCord Museum, McGill University), the Library
and Archives Canada, and other Canadian and British
institutions. Henderson was one of four 19th-century
Canadian photographers commemorated with a 1989
postage stamp.
David Mattison
HENNEMAN, NICOLAAS (1813–1898)
Dutch photographer in England, assistant to W.H.
Fox Talbot
It is unlikely that Nicolaas Henneman would have
become a photographer if he had remained in the Neth-
erlands. Before entering the service of William Henry
Fox Talbot (1800–1877) at the age of 26, he had shown
little creative energy or obvious artistic talent. He did,
however, possess an adventurous spirit that took him,
via Paris, to England, where he fi rst became Fox Talbot’s
servant. Fairly soon after, he became Fox Talbot’s as-
sistant in the latter’s experiments with photography.
Talbot taught Henneman to make photogenic drawings
and later calotypes and salted paper prints. Henneman
also accompanied Fox Talbot on his (photographic)
travels through Germany (1842), France (1843) and
Scotland (1844).
Fox Talbot showed great faith in Henneman’s capaci-
ties. In 1844, he made him head of the photographic
printing business in Reading that later scholars would
call the Reading Establishment. It was one of Fox Tal-
bot’s fi rst attempts at making the calotype a commercial
success. The intention was for Henneman to produce
large quantities of photographs that could be used as
book illustration or sold separately. One of the most
famous publications for which Henneman’s Reading
Establishment produced the photographic prints was
Talbot’s Pencil of Nature, which was published in six
instalments with a total of 24 plates between 1844 and- Talbot selected these photographs with immense
care from his collection of negatives and provided each
with accompanying texts that covered the technical,
historical and aesthetic aspects of photography. While
at Reading, Henneman also produced the prints for
Talbot’s homage to Sir Walter Scott, Sun Pictures in
Scotland.
Henneman did not just work for Fox Talbot in Read-
ing, however. John Walter, the editor of The Times, for
instance, published a small book in 1844 in memory of
his daughter Mary Catherine that included a photograph
of a marble bust of her taken by Henneman. He also
produced a photographic supplement for Sir William
Stirling’s Annals of the Artists of Spain in 1847 and made
prints from the negatives of other photographers such as
Calvert Richard Jones and George Bridges. Jones and
Bridges mostly worked in countries around the Mediter-
ranean and Henneman distributed their photographs to
book and print dealers throughout England.
Henneman also toured Reading and its environs with
his camera. His photographs give a good impression of
what Reading looked like at the time. The printing estab-
lishment itself can be seen on two unique photographs
from 1846. Taken in the back garden, they fi t together to
form a panorama. The left-hand photograph, probably
taken by Henneman, shows Talbot taking a photograph
and an assistant making a reproduction of an engraving.
The right-hand photograph, probably taken by Talbot,
shows Henneman standing behind the camera in front of
a sculpture, with various assistants busy with two racks
of the printing frames that were used for printing.
The printing establishment was not a fi nancial suc-
cess and Talbot decided to close it in 1847. The intended
market—print collectors and photographers—turned out
to be much too small. Moreover, buyers complained that
the photographs faded too quickly.
In 1847, Henneman moved to London, opening a
portrait studio on the upper fl oors of 122 Regent Street,
above the instrument makers Newman & Co., which
Talbot rented. In his letters to Talbot, Henneman had
more than once pointed out that making portraits might
prove to be a very lucrative business. While at Reading,
Henneman had made portraits of local stationer George
Lovejoy and of the author Mary Mitford and her dog
Flush (collection of the National Media Museum).
In 1848, Henneman took over control of the studio
together with the chemist Thomas Agostine Malone,
whom he had met in Reading. While Henneman ran the