751
suaded Fox Talbot relinquish his patent rights of the
calotype process. Lord Rosse experimented with the da-
guerreotype as early as 1842, and in 1853 corresponded
with Talbot regarding his attempts to produce calotypes
of the moon through The Great Leviathan then Europe’s
largest telescope. However, it is his wife Countess
Rosse (1813–1885) who became the more celebrated
amateur photographer becoming a member of the Royal
Photographic Society in 1853, the Dublin Photographic
Society on the 3rd December 1856 and was elected a
member of the Amateur Photographic Association on
the 13th March 1863. The Dublin Photographic Society,
which changed its name to the Photographic Society of
Ireland in 1858, held its fi rst meeting at Leinster House
on November 8th 1854 and organised the photographic
sections of the Royal Dublin Society’s annual Arts and
Manufacturers exhibition. At this exhibition in 1859,
Countess Rosse was awarded a silver medal for best
paper negative by the Dublin Photographic Society
and exhibited her photographs at the Dublin Interna-
tional Exhibition of 1865. Other signifi cant amateursare Sir Joscelyn Coghill (1826–1905) who won a prize
for photography at the Paris Exhibition of 1863 and
Gerald Dillon and his wife Augusta Crofton Dillon of
Clonbrock House Co. Galway.
Inventions relating to photographic processes also
appeared throughout the century in Ireland. Dr. Thomas
Woods presented a paper on his ‘catalystype process’ on
May 12th 1845 to the Royal Irish Academy, resulting
in correspondence between RIA and Fox Talbot who
claimed there was little difference between the process
and his patented calotype. The miniature portraitist
Bernard Mulrenin (1803–68) presented a paper in
April 1859 to the Royal Dublin Society and the Photo-
graphic Society of Ireland claiming to have devised a
process of transferring the image-bearing emulsion of
the wet plate negative onto marble or ivory rendering
the image similar to miniature paintings. Ireland’s most
signifi cant contribution to the science of photography
came from the Trinity professor John Joly (1857–1903)
who patented the fi rst single-image colour photography
process in 1894.IRELAND
O’Sullivan, Timothy. Historic Spanish Record of the Conquest.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, 1988 (1988.1064) Image © The
Metropolitan Museum of Art.Hannavy_RT72353_C009.indd 751 7/5/2007 11:33:36 AM