1354
cloud studies were described as “gems” of the 1863
salon and these and his portraits up to10 × 12 inches
were noted for their size.
By 1863 Stuart-Wortley was on the Council [of the
Photographic Society] and later served as Vice President
at various periods over the next twenty years. From
1863 he exhibited regularly at the Photographic Soci-
ety of London and received medals there, at the Royal
Polytechnic Society of Cornwall, and the Manchester
Photographic Society as well as at the Société française
de photographie in Paris where his “A Wave Rolling in”
was praised. He also began lecturing and contributing
papers to the Photographic News and the Photographic
Journal of the Photographic Society of London where
his long article “On Photography in Connection with
Art” appeared in October 1863. In it he describes how
the beauty of a sunset serves as a respite from the vexa-
tions of life and an inspiration. He thus recommended
amateurs get “life” in their pictures with some form
of rapid process and told of his own success with add-
ing bromide to collodion and liberal nitric acid in the
bath. This was Stuart-Wortley‘s only manifesto; his
succeeding articles were mostly concerned with plate
sensitivity. His quest to capture the ephemeral beauty of
seascapes was not mere rising to a technical challenge
but embodied deeply felt belief that spiritual comfort
and values could be expressed in photographs of fl eeting
natural phenomena.
In 1864 Stuart-Wortley settled in Rosslyn House, St
John’s Wood, London where he built a studio, and in
1865 married Augusta Vershoyle—the couple divorced
in 1878. He also turned professional in 1864 forming
the United Association of Photographers, an ambi-
tious multifaceted commercial franchise company; His
brother-in-law Sir William Welby, was a shareholder and
Director. The Association aimed to specialize in upper
class and royal portraiture and over the next few years
registered 82 portraits in the Copyright Offi ce. They
promoted new products in various formats—chiefl y
the German Jacob Wothly’s 1864 uranium and silver
process; an early but ultimately unsuccessful form of
collodio-chloride printing-out paper—and released art
reproductions in the new carbon process. The venture
and was not as successful as hoped and in 1866 Stuart-
Wortley took on a position as Secretary to his uncle,
Lord John Manners, at the Department of Works. The
United Association of Photographers company was
liquidated in1867.
Through the late 1860s Stuart-Wortley continued
exhibiting and publishing unusually large portraits and
art reproductions in carbon including a series old mas-
ter drawings in the collection of his relative the Duke
of Rutland at Belvoir Castle In 1869 James Sheldon
Wholesale Publishers of London released a series of card
mounted albumen prints “Photographed from Nature by
Colonel Stuart-Wortley.” His “moonlit” seascapes also
developed new scale and drama in the late 1860s and
came with poetic titles.
In 1872 Stuart-Wortley again tried business when he
founded the Uranium Dry Plate Co. to market his own
urano-bromide dry-plate negatives. Despite energetic
promotion, further demonstration in 1873 that a strong
alkaline developer considerably increased the sensitivity
of his plates and endorsement of the plates by Captain
William Abney, the business was sold in 1875. A year
before the Lord Chancellor appointed Stuart-Wortley as
Head of the Patents Museum at South Kensington. This
position evolved into that of Keeper of Machinery and
Inventions, which he held until retirement in 1889.
Wortley turned his enthusiasm in the late 1870s
to further the cause of carbon printing and then later
gelatine dry-plate processes. He exhibited widely,
winning a medal for large fi gure studies in 1875 at the
Royal Cornwall Polytechnic and medals at Philadel-
phia Centennial in 1876 for large portraits and his new
almost abstract large seascapes. He returned as a Vice
President at the Photographic Society from 1875–1888
and served as a Trustee of Photographer’s Benevolent
Society formed in 1874 with Lord Hawarden, whose late
wife the amateur photographer Clementina Hawarden,
had also won medals for “instantaneous” prints at the
Photographic Society of London exhibition in 1863.
In 1879 he discovered that gelatine emulsions kept at
a high temperature could be made sensitive over a few
hours rather than days.
Stuart-Wortley travelled during and after his military
service to Africa, Turkey, Ceylon, India, Greece, Turkey,
Europe and the Mediterranean. In 1880 he undertook a
world tour with his new wife Lavinia, neé Gibbons. The
couple travelled via Australia and New Zealand to Tahiti
and on to New York. He carried his own gelatine dry-
plates especially modifi ed to withstand the heat of the
tropics and a mechanical shutter of his own invention to
cater for the shorter exposures needed for the bright light
of the Pacifi c. In 1882 he published a book illustrated
with collotypes titled Tahiti: a series of photographs
taken by Colonel Wortley with letterpress by Lady Anne
Brassey. In addition to his photography Stuart-Wortley
was an expert in marine fauna and maintained a large
collection of British specimens in aquaria. He called on
ethnographic collector William Macleay in Sydney in
February 1880 and a photograph of the latter’s collection
of native artefacts appears in the Tahiti book ascribed
to that of Mr Flockton.
Stuart-Wortley continued to exhibit until the mid-
1880s and resigned from his position at the South
Kensington Museum in 1889 due to ill health. He died
30 April1890 in London. In 1898 a group of fi fty prints
were exhibited for sale at the International Exhibition
of the Royal Photographic Society. The fate of the bulk