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of Edinburgh in 1856. His residency in Rome made
it desirable to employ agents or other representatives
including William Ramsey, Professor of Humanity at
Glasgow University. Ramsey also described MacPher-
son’s photolithographs to an international readership in
Frank Leslie’s New York Journal in 1856. MacPherson
clearly valued his links with Scotland and kept in touch
with and occasionally visited photographic colleagues
there. In 1862 he also exhibited over 400 photographs
in London in a gallery just off Regent Street and was
present at the opening.
MacPherson favoured large format photographs
which necessitated the use of long exposures. In 1862
he told The Photographic News that he employed an
exposure time of fi ve minutes for a distant landscape in
good light but that between ten and twenty minutes were
necessary for near objects. For some of the sculptures
permanently housed in galleries, MacPherson stated that
two hours or even two days were required to produce
a good negative. Typically, MacPherson’s photographs
were mounted and carry his oval blind-stamp. These pro-
vide attribution but also chart the course of his various
studio addresses. However it was at 12 Vicolo D’Alibert
that he achieved much of his success.
Some of MacPherson’s negatives bear his signature.
Pencil reference numbers corresponding to his cata-
logues frequently appear on contemporary mounts. By
1863 he listed 305 photographs including picturesque
local subjects such as “The Fish-Market in the Ghetto,” as
well as his usual historical themes. People rarely appear
as he recognised that his customers wanted photographs
of classical antiquities in Rome and nearby locations
such as Terracina, Tivoli and Paestum, not life in a con-
temporary city. Nevertheless “The Valley of St. Anatolia
with the new Railway Viaduct” indicated his prepared-
ness to occasionally include some aspects of modernity.
In a different vein, “Falls of the Terni” became on of the
most famous waterfall photographs of the period.
MacPherson sold his photographs separately at a
uniform price of fi ve shillings but he also stocked ready-
fi lled albums. Other customers evidently compiled
their own albums frequently mixing MacPherson’s
photographs with those of his contemporaries such as
Carlo Ponti. His photographs possess pronounced light
and shadow effects and indicate a sensitively to both the
monumental and the elemental aspects of the subject
matter depicted. He did not have a standardised format,
preferring to trim prints to achieve strong compositional
arrangements. Helmut Gernsheim perceptively observed
that his prints of surpassing beauty were not dependent
exclusively on the beauty of the scenery.
Vatican Sculptures, a small volume with engravings
derived from MacPherson’s photographs and reduced
down to miniature size by Geraldine was published in
1863 with a second revised addition appearing in 1868.
A companion volume to the Lateran and Capitoline col-
lections was planned but never materialised. However
MacPherson clearly photographed at the Capitoline, as
a two volume album exists in at least one copy with a
bound-in pricelist dated 1871. MacPherson continued to
sell works of art including fourteen examples to the Na-
tional Gallery of Ireland and, famously, Michaelangelo’s
The Entombment which he purchased cheaply in 1846
and sold to the National Gallery in London in 1868 for
£2000. MacPherson was disappointed that what had
been known in the family as ‘Geraldine’s fortune’ re-
alised a smaller sum than he had anticipated, particularly
when his photography business was showing signs of
slowing down. His health also begun to fail at this time
and he died in Rome on November 17, 1872.
Janice HartBiography
Robert MacPherson was born in Scotland in 1814. He
studied medicine at Edinburgh University (1831–1835)
but his medical career was soon abandoned in favour
of a very different life as a topographical painter. He
moved to Rome in c.1840 and established himself as a
painter in oils and also started a business as an art dealer.
The most signifi cant aspect of his activities as a dealer
was the purchase of a Michaelangelo painting in 1846
and its subsequent sale in 1868. He married Geraldine
Bate, a niece of Anna Jameson, the expert in Italian art.
MacPherson appears to have abandoned painting shortly
afterwards and turned instead to photography. It is likely
that he had already begun to take photographs using the
calotype process by at least the late 1840s but in the
early 1850s he had moved on to the albumen process
and was to subsequently adopt the collodion-albumen
process. His photographic business was founded on the
production of large format prints of Roman architecture
and antiquities, together with views of the surrounding
Campagna. He quickly achieved commercial success.
His interests extended to photo-mechanical printing.
His modifi cations to the photolithographic process was
patented in 1853. He exhibited regularly in 1850s and
1860s and achieved much critical acclaim. In 1863 he
brought out a small handbook, Vatican Sculptures, con-
taining illustrations derived from his photographs. By
c.1866 his photographic business was still very active
and in 1868 he sold an hitherto “lost” Michaelangelo
painting to the National Gallery in London. In the late
1860s, both his business and his health were beginning
to fail. He died in 1872.
See also: Calotype and Talbotype; Edinburgh
Calotype Club; and Société française de
photographie.