649
studio, Malone spent most of his time experimenting.
Unfortunately, very few of the photographs taken by
Henneman and Malone remain. The only portrait that
can defi nitely be attributed to them by means of the
stamp on the back is one of the painter William Henry
Hunt (collection of the Museum of the History of Sci-
ence). The fi ne pencil screen on the photograph may
indicate that Hunt used it to make a self-portrait. It would
have pleased Talbot that the photograph has not been
retouched. He often complained at the way in which the
miniaturists employed by Henneman and Malone ruined
the photographs with their heavy retouching. Malone
left the studio in 1851 to take up a teaching post at the
Royal College of Chemistry, leaving Henneman to carry
on alone, under the name of Henneman & Co.
Henneman and Malone took part in the Great Exhibi-
tion of 1851. With Talbot’s help, Henneman almost land-
ed a signifi cant order from the Royal Commissioners
to make the photographs for the jury reports. However,
the Commissioners were so disappointed at the quality
of the fi rst photographs that Henneman made for them,
especially considering the price, that they cancelled the
deal. Talbot’s intervention failed to prevent the order
going to Hugh Owen, Claude-Marie Ferrier, Friedrich
von Martens and Robert Bingham.
Henneman enjoyed greater success following the
invention by Scott Archer of the wet collodion glass
negative in 1851. In 1852, he was one of the fi rst
professional photographers to make negatives using
this technique. And not without success: the portraits
that Henneman made using this technique garnered
considerable praise, including a report by Ernest La-
can in the French photography journal La Lumière (24
December 1853):
Ce qui les distingue surtout, c’est une grande fi nesse de
détails, qu’on les croirait obtenues sur ivoire ou sur glace
... Ce qu’il y a de certain, c’est qu’il sait donner à son
modèle une expression naturelle, et qu’il éclaire de façon
à produire un effet de relief saississant. (Ernest Lacan,
“Revue Photographique. Artistes Anglais. M. Henneman,”
in La Lumière, 3/52 (24 December 1853), 207–208)
The portrait of an old man in a cape, for example, is
reminiscent of the portraits that the French photographer
Nadar began to make around this time. Because of his
grandeur, the man in the portrait was long thought to
be the Hungarian freedom fi ghter Lajos Kosuth, who
had previously posed for Henneman in 1851. Another
photograph of the same man in profi le, however, is la-
belled as being of a certain Signor Senture. In any case,
the daguerreotypes that the American photographers
Southworth & Hawes took of Kosuth a year later show
an entirely different man.
1853 was a highly successful year for Henneman,
with 833 portraits made. That year, a writer for Charles
Dickens’ magazine Household Words described Henne-
man’s studio, in which he witnessed the photographer
expertly preparing a glass negative. The English-based
Swede Oscar Gustav Rejlander also found his way to
122 Regent Street when he was looking for a good
photographer to teach him the art. According to Lacan’s
description, Henneman had a talent for putting his
subjects at ease. As a result, his portraits never seem
contrived. This is immediately apparent in his series of
photographs of Zulus and earthmen that was exhibited
in London in 1853. Despite the frightening situation in
which they found themselves, Henneman was neverthe-
less able to make them adopt a fairly natural pose. A
number of these photographs is now in the collection
of the Royal Archives at Windsor.
After 1853, the number of professional photographers
in London grew rapidly. Henneman proved unable to
hold his own among competition that was extremely
fi erce and not always equally fair. In 1858, Talbot se-
cretly paid off many of Henneman’s debts. Their ways
fi nally parted when Henneman left with his family for
Birmingham to try his luck as an operator. As his last
letter to Talbot in 1866 shows, it was not a success:
I am here in a situation till July. I was obliged to take it as
London is overwashed with photographers. They advertise
themselves as fi rst rate artists at 30 shilling a week. I do
get four pounds here but I am sorry to say it does not suit
my health. I am pretty well shut up for 8 hours in a room
by stretching my arms out I can touch the walls both ways
so I can’t call it a room but a closet” (Letter of 30 March
1866, NMeM 1937-5439).
Not long after, Henneman began a second career, as
a lodging house keeper in London.
Photographs by Nicolaas Henneman have been
preserved in the collections of, among others, Lacock
Abbey, the National Media Museum in Bradford, and
the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Saskia AsserBiography
Nicolaas Henneman was born in Heemskerk in the Neth-
erlands on 8 December 1813. After various adventures
he came to England in 1838, entering the service of Wil-
liam Henry Fox Talbot as valet and soon assisting him
with his experiments with photography. When Talbot set
up a photographic printing establishment in Reading in
1844, he appointed Henneman to run it. At the Reading
Establishment, as it later came to be called, Henneman
made photographic prints for various clients and pub-
lications, including Talbot’s Pencil of Nature and Sun
Pictures of Scotland and Sir William Stirling’s Annals of
the Artists of Spain. After the printing establishment was
closed in 1847, Talbot helped Henneman set up a portrait
studio at 122 Regent Street in London. Later that year,
Henneman was appointed “Photographer in Ordinary to