437
example, Jottings... from the diary of Amelia, Countess
and Heiress of Derwentwater (1869) which featured a
portait of the author.
The Illustrated London News from at least 1865 made
engravings from photographs credited to the Downey
studio as did other periodicals up to and beyond 1900.
According to Downey they never published a portrait
without the full consent of the sitter. Between April 1883
and April 1890 the fi rm registered over 230 portraits of
Royalty and celebrities at Stationer’s Hall.
H. Baden Pritchard in his series of reports of com-
mercial photographic premises published in the Photo-
graphic News during the 1870s and 1880s and collected
together in The Photographic Studios of Europe (1882)
reported on Downey’s London studio and their general
business methods. The report allayed some of the exclu-
sivity attached to the fi rm: “Some people may suppose
that the Messrs Downey reserve to themselves the right
of photographing titled personages; this is a mistake. A
circular published by them certainly conveys the idea
that ‘anybody, as calls himself anybody,’ must perforce
be portrayed by the famous Newcastle fi rm which has
now established itself in the neighbourhood of Buck-
ingham Palace.” The fi rm charged one guinea for one
pose with additional fees for additional positions, which
brought the charges into line with contemporary fi rms.
Cartes were one guinea per dozen.
The fi rm occupied ‘two modest little houses in Ebury
Street’ with showrooms on the ground fl oor and studios
and dressing rooms up a short fl ight of steps. Number
61 Ebury Street had two studios and number 57 one
glass room 42 × 14 feet which by 1882 had just been
completed. Most of the Downey’s printing was done in
Newcastle where a new studio and premises had been
opened in 1864. This was also where all the pictures for
publication were mounted and fi nished. The fi rm had
additional premises at 10 Nevern Square, Earls Court,
London which may have been used for printing and
fi nishing prints.
A collection of Downey’s court and social work from
the early 1860s to 1920s is held by the Hulton Archive
(www.getty-images.com) and National Portrait Gallery
in London have holdings of the Downey studio work.
Michael Pritchard
See also: Carte-de-Visite; and Platinotype Co. (Willis
& Clements).Further Reading
Dimond, Fances and Taylor, Roger, Crown and Camera, Har-
mondsworth, Penguin Books Ltd, 1987.
“Obituaries of the Year” in British Journal Photographic Almanac
1916 , 417–418.
Pritchard, H Barden, The Photographic Studios of Europe, Lon-
don, Piper and Carter, 1882, 19–23.
Pritchard, Michael, A Directory of London Photographers
1841–1908, Watford, PhotoResearch, 1994.DRAPER, JOHN WILLIAM (1811–1882)
English-born chemist and photographer
John William Draper was born in England in 1811, and
died in 1882 in New York. After emigrating to America
he earned a M.D. at the University of Pennsylvania
and in 1839 was hired at New York University to teach
chemistry. Draper’s early work in photochemistry
makes him the most important American precursor of
photography. Draper realized, ahead of most, that the
photographically active spectrum (blue-violet) did not
match the visual spectrum, and therefore that the photo-
graphic focus would differ from the optical one. He also
deduced a fi xing solution from an early paper of John
Herschel’s on hyposulphites. When the daguerreotype
process was made public in New York, in September
1839, he started experimenting, and by the end of theDRAPER, JOHN WILLIAM
Downey, W. and D. Sarah Bernhardt the as Empress Theodora
in Sardou’s “Theodora.”
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles © The J. Paul Getty
Museum.