660
enough to hire a photography assistant, a “Miss Mann,”
it still was not enough to satisfy their aspirations.
Having interrupted a promising career as an il-
lustrator, Hill convinced Adamson early on that they
ought to publish their work. In 1844 they acquired a
custom-made, large-format camera capable of produ-
cing images up to 16 × 13 inches (41 × 33 centimeters)
that could better compete with engravings. That August
they announced plans to produce albums “in a style of
great elegance” and available by subscription, adver-
tising a half dozen titles: The Fishermen and Women
of the Firth of Forth, Highland Character and Cos-
tume, The Architectural Structures of Edinburgh, The
Architectural Structures of Glasgow &c, Old Castles,
Abbeys &c. in Scotland, and Portraits of Distinguished
Scotchmen.
Each album was expected to contain 20 to 25 prints,
but none was ever realized. While the price likely dis-
suaded many, continued public uncertainty over the
photograph’s quality and durability perhaps proved
an even greater impediment. The larger photographic
formats turned out to be harder to prepare and ma-
nipulate, yet Hill employed them in his attempts to
enter the more lucrative English market, sending sets
of images to London art dealer Dominic Colnaghi in
1845 and London publisher John Murray a year later.
Neither man was interested, however, especially given
that Talbot maintained an exclusive patent on calotype
printing in England. As a result, the only publication to
appear during the studio’s lifetime was the more mod-
est A Series of Calotype Views of St. Andrews, printed
in a small run at Rock House by the photographers
themselves in 1846.
“My ambition is to leave my name on a great and
noble work worthy of England,” (Stevenson, 1991, 13)
Hill confessed to a friend in 1845. In his discourage-
ment over their limited success despite enormous critical
praise, he considered giving up photography more than
once. By 1846, as the pair made some of their most
lyrical work in landscape photographs like “The Fairy
Tree at Colinton” (c. 1846), Hill returned to painting to
accept an ambitious commission for a scene of Edin-
burgh Castle, which he based in part on photographs of
its architecture and Gordon Highlander guards. In the
meantime, Adamson’s failing health slowed the studio’s
photographic output, bringing it to a halt by mid-1847.
Despite returning to his family in St. Andrews to recu-
perate, he died on 14 January 1848.
Adamson’s death brought an end not only to the part-
nership but to the studio. Although Hill and Adamson’s
unmatched reputation would have made it easy for
Hill to recruit another partner, only Adamson’s brother
Robert seemed an adequate replacement, but his medical
practice prohibited the move.
Instead, Hill pursued his work as secretary of the
Royal Scottish Academy and continued painting, mak-
ing only brief returns to photography, the most sig-
nifi cant of which was a partnership with the Glasgow
engraver and photographer, Alexander McGlashan, from
1861 to 1862. While his glass negative wet collodion
portraits with McGlashan bear some resemblance to his
previous work, Hill’s style was unsuited to changes in
the medium. No longer able to rely on Adamson’s subtle
printing techniques, the uniform sharpness of the images
diluted any overall impact in distracting details.
In 1866 Hill fi nally completed his painting “The
Signing of the Deed of Demission,” over two decades
after the fact. Heavily dependent on the Free Church
portraits, the curious composition resembles a photo-
montage of long, narrow rows of crowded faces. Hill’s
inclusion of Adamson pointing a camera makes the work
as much a testament to photography as a depiction of
the event it ostensibly sought to commemorate.
Hill sold the entire contents of Rock House—in-
cluding all remaining photographs and negatives—to
the photographer Thomas Annan in 1869 and died
in Newington on 17 May the following year. It was
Annan’s son, James Craig Annan, who finally got
the photographs exhibited in England and abroad at
the close of the 19th century and published them as
photogravures in Alfred Stieglitz’s Camera Work from
1905 to 1912. The resulting renewal of interest in Hill
and Adamson’s achievement secured their place in the
history of the medium as well as their signifi cance to
future photographers.
Stephen MonteiroBiography
David Octavius Hill was born 20 May 1802 in Perth,
Perthshire, Scotland, the eighth of 12 children to
bookseller Thomas Hill and Emilia Murray. He stud-
ied drawing at Perth Academy under David Junor and
painting under Andrew Wilson at the School of Design
in Edinburgh (1818–c. 1821). In 1821 he published
Sketches of Scenery in Perthshire and illustrated several
major works of literature in the 1830s. He was secre-
tary of the Royal Scottish Academy from 1830 to 1869
and exhibited landscape paintings and sketches at the
Royal Institution in the 1820s and at the Royal Scottish
Academy from the 1830s to the 1860s.
Robert Adamson was born in Burnside, Fife, Scotland
on 26 April 1821 as one of 10 children to farm proprietors
Alexander Adamson and Rachel Melville. He developed
an early interest in science and technology and appren-
ticed with a millwright before learning photography from
his older brother Robert in 1842. The two collaborated
for several months and in May 1843 Adamson opened a