718
of photographic societies in London, Manchester and
Norwich in 1856. At the Art Treasures Exhibition, Man-
chester, 1857, Howlett exhibited his portraits of W.P.
Frith and other noted painters such as F.R. Pickersgill,
J.C. Horsley and Thomas Webster along with examples
of photographic copies of paintings. His architectural
views of Rouen, France were exhibited posthumously
at the Photographic Society of London in 1859.
Howlett’s major work was to document the construc-
tion of the massive steamship Leviathan, later re-named
The Great Eastern. At the time of its launching it was
the largest ship in the world. It was constructed in Lon-
don on the banks of the river Thames (at present day
Millwall) and Howlett’s photographs of the event date
from November 1857. His images (along with some
by Joseph Cundall) were translated into engravings for
The Illustrated Times (16 January 1858, vol. 6, no. 146,
45–69) and thus achieved wide circulation. Some of the
photographic prints were exhibited at the Photographic
Society of London annual exhibition of 1858. He also
produced stereographs of the ship with George Downs
for the London Stereoscopic Company. Howlett’s views
of the gigantic hull surrounded by scaffolding in the
shipyard, and of the deck peopled with foremen and
labourers, refl ected and stimulated the widespread inter-
est in this feat of engineering. The best known of all his
images is the portrait of the ship’s creator and engineer,
Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–59). Brunel’s stove-
pipe hat, and the stacked heels of his boots, gives him
height and presence. His formal clothes are dishevelled
and muddied from the site while the cheroot he is smok-
ing lends a jaunty air. The powerful backdrop is simply
formed by the chains of the stern checking drum. As the
ship was too large to be “free launched” these chains
were essential in controlling the rate of slide down the
ways to the water’s edge where it was halted and left for
the spring tide to lift it from its cradles. The portrait by
Howlett represents the archetypal Victorian, driven by
ambition and confi dence, and celebrates the enterprise
of an era.
Barely one year after this image was made, Howlett
died at his residence in Bedford Place, Kensington,
London, on 2 December 1858, aged twenty-eight. A
combination of causes of death were reported ranging
from a specifi c “attack of typhus fever which followed
a severe cold caught by working in a new and damp
operating room” (Photographic Notes, 15 December
1858, vol. III, 290) to a more general “excess of zeal
... imprudence and overwork” (Journal of the Photo-
graphic Society, 21 December 1858, 112). However,
Mr. Hardwich, the correspondent to the Journal of the
Photographic Society, continued in his Remarks on the
Death of Mr. Howlett, with his own speculations about
the cause of death: “Collodion photography, in the way
that an amateur would practise it, is quite harmless; but
the professional operator must be upon his guard; for,
unless he is a very strong man, he will certainly suffer
in the end by continually shutting himself up in small
rooms half full of the vapour of ether.” Howlett’s early
death clearly did not help to allay fears among the grow-
ing ranks of professional photographers that working
with the noxious chemicals then required for their work
could be severely harmful to their health.
Martin BarnesBiography
Robert Howlett was born in 1830, the son of a clergy-
man, Reverend Robert Howlett, of Longham, Norfolk.
Nothing has been traced about his mother, education or
early life. Howlett is not recorded as having any other
activity and can therefore be considered to be one of
the fi rst to have taken up photography as a profession
exclusively from the start. He began making photo-
graphs in 1852 and soon thereafter was employed at
the Photographic Institution, London. Throughout 1856
and 1857 he was extremely active taking photographs
for the artist W.P. Frith, working under royal patronage
to photograph works by Raphael and to make a series
of portraits of Crimean War heroes, and publishing a
book on the printing and preservation of photographs.
He made portraits and reproductions of works of art as
well as landscape photographs which he showed at the
annual exhibitions of photographic societies in London,
Manchester and Norwich. Howlett’s major work was to
document the construction of the steamship Leviathan,
later re-named The Great Eastern. His images were
translated into engravings for The Illustrated Times in- In particular, his image of Isambard Kingdom
Brunel and the Launching Chains of the Great Eastern
(1857) has become one of the icons of an era and is
one of the fi rst and fi nest examples of environmental
portraiture. Howlett died in London, on 2 December
1858, aged twenty-eight. His early death was perhaps
hastened by overwork and prolonged exposure to nox-
ious photographic chemicals.
Collections
Birmingham Central Library, UK.
International Museum of Photography, George Eastman
House, USA.
Victoria and Albert Museum, UK.
See also: Victoria, Queen and Albert, Prince Consort;
Talbot, William Henry Fox; and London Stereoscopic
Company.Further Reading
Haworth-Booth, Mark (ed.), The Golden Age of British Photog-
raphy 1839–1900, New York: Aperture, 1984.