57
voted exclusively to photography held in 1852 at the
Royal Society of Arts. He was active in exhibiting
many works at the photographic society exhibitions in
Dundee (1854); Glasgow, British Association for the
Advancement of Science exhibition (1855); Norwich
(1856); Yeovil (1856) and London (1854, 1855, 1856,
1857). His numerous picturesque landscape and archi-
tectural subjects included views of locations such as
Tintern Abbey, Warwick Castle, the Cambridge colleges,
Rochester castle and cathedral, St. Albans and scenes
on the Thames, in Wales and Monmouthshire. Prices
for Archer’s prints ranged from £1 and 1shilling to £1
and 15 shillings.
During the early 1850s Archer moved to 105 Great
Russell Street, Bloomsbury, London to set up a busi-
ness in photography. It was here that he published a
full account of his invention, Manual of the Collodion
Photographic Process in two now rare editions in 1852
and 1854 (copies are held at the British Library, The
Gernsheim collection and the Museum of the History
of Science, Oxford). In 1852, together with Peter Wick-
ens Fry, Archer also devised the collodion positive, or
‘Ambrotype’ process which became extremely popular
for portraiture. This was a variant of the wet collodion
process in which an underexposed negative was backed
with black paint, paper or velvet resulting in a unique
positive image often presented in a velvet-lined, plastic
or leather case. While Archer gained very little commer-
cial success as a photographer he maintained his living
working precariously as an inventor. His inventions
included a camera inside which the various developing
processes for the calotype could be self-contained (later
adapted for Archer’s own collodion process by his friend
William Brown) and a variety of types of lenses. In 1855
he devised a technique for stripping off the collodion
image and transferring this to other supports such as
cloth and leather for which he was granted British pat-
ent number 1914.
Despite his signifi cant contribution to photography
Archer died in poverty on 2 May 1857 and was buried in
an unmarked grave in Kensal Green Cemetery, London.
The Journal of the Photographic Society (21 May, 1857,
No. 54, 269) noted:
Another victim has been added to the long catalogue of
martyrs of science. Mr. Frederick Scott Archer, the true
architect of all those princely fortunes which are being
acquired by the use of his ideas and inventions, after strug-
gling for some time for bare existence, has now departed
from among us ...A subscription list, the Archer Fund, was established on
21 May by his friends Roger Fenton and John Mayall
with other members of the Photographic Society of
London, for the benefi t of his family. However, Archer’s
widow died the following year and the subscription was
closed in August 1859 with just £767 collected. His three
children were granted a pension of £50 from the Civil
List due to their father’s photographic discoveries which
it was noted had saved some £30,000 in the production
of Ordnance Survey maps alone.
Archer’s photographs remain scarce in 2001. The
Royal Photographic Society collection contains thirty-
three albumen photographs including an album of the
Kenilworth Castle views. Also early experimental col-
lodion positives printed on glass, cloth and leather, a
wet collodion plate camera from 1852 and a collodion
positive portrait of Archer (1855) by Robert Cade. A
view of Sparrow’s House, Ipswich was purchased in
1856 from the London Photographic Society Exhibition
of that year by Henry Cole, the fi rst director of the South
Kensington, later Victoria and Albert Museum, London
and remains in that collection. Further Archer material
exists in the Gernsheim Collection, The Harry Ranson
Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Aus-
tin, USA. Six or Archer’s Kenilworth views were offered
for sale from the collection of the Earl of Craven (an
early practitioner of the wet collodion process) in 2001
(Bearne’s, Exeter, 12 May 2001).
Martin BarnesBiography
Frederick Scott Archer was born in 1813 at Bishops
Stortford, Hertfordshire, England. His career began
as a sculptor in London but he turned to photography
from 1847. He experimented with making negatives
on glass and in 1851 published his process of wet col-
lodion which revolutionised photographic practice with
its rapid exposure times and ability to render fi ne detail.
Archer chose not to patent his process and allowed it
to be used freely. The same year of his invention he
photographed with it the ruins of Kenilworth Castle,
England. Thereafter the wet collodion process was
adopted quickly world-wide and became the dominant
form of photography throughout the 1850s until the
1880s. From 1852 to 1856 he exhibited numerous works
at the photographic society exhibitions in London,
Dundee, Glasgow, Norwich and Yeovil. While gaining
very little commercial success as a practising fi ne art
photographer Archer continued to work on inventions
at his premises in Bloomsbury, London where he also
published two manuals of the collodion process (1852
and 1854). His other inventions included improved
cameras, lenses and photographic processes such as
the collodion positive, or Ambrotype—a variant of the
wet collodion process—which became widely used for
portraiture. Despite his signifi cant contribution to the
advancement of photography Archer died in poverty in
London on 2 May 1857.