1498
Further Reading
Michèle Auer, and Michel Auer, Encyclopédie internationale
des photographes de 1839 à nos jours, Hermance, Camera
Obscura, 1985.
Wolfgang Drost, ‘‘La photosculpture entre art industriel et arti-
sanat. La réussite de François Willème (1830–1905), Gazette
des beaux-arts (Octobre 1985): 113–129.
Gillian Greenhill, ‘‘Photo-sculpture », History of Photography,
no. 3 (1980): 243–245.
Raymond Lécuyer, Histoire de la photographie, Paris, Baschet,
1945.
Paris en 3D, Paris, Musée Carnavalet, 2001.
WILLIAMS, THOMAS, RICHARD
(1825–1871)
British professional photographer
Thomas Richard Williams was a London-born profes-
sional photographer who was particularly known for
the quality of his stereo-photography. Born in 1825,
Williams was one of the few British photographers to
make use of the daguerreotype process to produce news
photographs. He specialised in making stereoscopic
daguerreotype still-life studies and portraits. He also
produced a large range of conventional stereocards from
collodion negatives.
It is thought that Williams gained his professional
experience by acting as assistant to pioneer daguerreo-
typists Richard Beard (1801–1885) and Antoine Claudet
(1797–1867). Claudet was the fi rst professional to use
the stereo-daguerreotype in England and Williams was
able to learn his trade from a skilled master and later
go into direct competition with him.
Williams married Elizabeth in ca.1848–49 and went
on to have nine children; his wife, three boys and three
girls aged between fi ve and twenty-one survived him at
the time of Williams’ death at his home, Sellar’s Hall,
in Finchley north London. Williams made a good living
from his photography; as well as his large family there
were several servants employed, including a coachman.
Williams’ earliest photographic work seems to have
been stereoscopic still lives produced by the daguerreo-
type and collodion processes. Many objects reappear
in several of these elaborate set pieces. Musical instru-
ments, stuffed animals, statuettes, fruit and vegetables,
barrels, dead game, skulls and books all feature heavily,
refl ecting mid-Victorian taste.
A guitar, a table decoration within a glass dome and
a Brewster pattern stereo-viewer all feature in one of
his early tableaux, taken before his move to his Regent
Street studio in the West End of London in around 1854.
A small label on the reverse gives his early details:
‘Mr. T.R. Williams, Photographic Artist, 35, West Sq.
St. George’s Rd. Lambeth.’ At this time Lambeth was
a poor area of London, an unfashionable district south
of the River Thames.
If Williams was to make money from his photography
he needed to move to a richer area of the capitol and
Regent Street was the hub of fashionable photographers.
Claudet was at number 107, Mayall (1810–1901), who
also at one time assisted Claudet, was in the nearby
Strand (and later in Regent Street) and W.E. Kilburn
had a studio at number 234.Williams moved next door,
to number 236 Regent Street.
At his portrait studio, which was patronised by roy-
alty, aristocracy and the upper middle-classes, Williams
also advertised views taken in and around the Crystal
Palace (built originally in Hyde Park for the 1851 Great
Exhibition and later moved to south London). He also
offered a service to copy paintings, watercolors, crayon
drawings, sculptures, and daguerreotypes.
Williams photographed Queen Victoria at the open-
ing of the Crystal Palace Exhibition in June 1854 and
again in 1855 when she was in the company of Napo-
leon III.
Williams went on to undertake several royal commis-
sions including, in 1855, the launch of HMS Marlbor-
ough at Portsmouth and the return of servicemen from
the Crimea. The following year he produced a few su-
perb hand-colored stereo-daguerreotypes of the Queen’s
daughter, Princess Victoria, in her wedding dress.
Like Claudet Williams offered his stereo portraits
with their own folding, leather viewing case, embossed
with his name. He often subtly initialled his stereo-
daguerreotypes ‘T.R.W.’ in pencil on the black paper
surround, his earlier work was sometimes marked in
the image itself.
Williams exhibited his commercial work at several
London photographic exhibitions between 1855–1864.
Stereo work was shown (from collodion negatives),
along with a wide selection of carte de visite, and larger
portraits.
Williams’ reputation was largely built on the stereo-
daguerreotypes and the wide selection of card- mounted
stereos he produced at the Crystal Palace in 1854. Many
of his views were distributed by the London Stereo-
scopic Company, as well as other publishers.
By Christmas 1856, a series of around sixty views
(plus a few variations) entitled ‘Scenes in Our Village’
were available. This series showed life in a typical
rural village in the English countryside and were ac-
companied by lines of poetic verse, probably penned
by Williams himself.
Research by Brian May has shown the village pho-
tographed by Williams was Hinton Waldrist, just south
of Oxford and about forty miles from London. May
has also shown that Williams was, unusually, taking
at least two pairs of negatives of the same posed rustic
scenes, either using a single camera with two lenses
mounted above each other, then moving the camera to
one side and making another exposure, or by using two