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professional studio at Rock House in Edinburgh, where
he was joined by Hill within a month.
Hill and Adamson were in partnership from 1843 to
1848 and produced commissioned portraits and sold
prints through Alexander Hill’s Princes Street gallery.
Unsuccessful at publishing proposed albums on Scottish
themes, they nevertheless produced about three thousand
photographs and exhibited at the Board of Manufactur-
ers (1843), the Royal Scottish Academy (1844 and 1845)
and, after Adamson’s death, at the Great Exhibition at
the Crystal Palace (1851).
Adamson never married and died in St. Andrews on
14 January 1848. Hill became a member of the Photo-
graphic Society of Scotland in 1856 and ran a studio
with Alexander McGlashan from 1861 to 1862, where
he published Some Contributions Towards the Use of
Photography as an Art (1862). He sold the remnants of
his studio with Adamson in 1869. He was married to
Ann McDonald in 1837and had two daughters, though
only one survived birth. His wife died in 1841 and in
1862 he married the sculptor Amelia Robertson Paton.
He died 17 May 1870 at Newington Lodge, Mayfi eld
Terrace, Scotland.
Major holdings of Hill and Adamson’s work are in the
National Galleries of Scotland (Edinburgh), the Glasgow
University Library, the National Media Museum
(Bradford), the National Portrait Gallery (London), the
Victoria and Albert Museum (London), and the George
Eastman House (Rochester, NY).
See also: Rigby, Lady Elizabeth Eastlake;
Pictorialism; Talbot, William Henry Fox; Calotype
and Talbotype; Brewster, Sir David; Wet Collodion
Positive Processes; Annan, Thomas; Annan, James
Craig; Stieglitz, Alfred; and Photogravure.
Further Reading
Bell, Keith (editor), The Photographs of David Octavius Hill
and Robert Adamson, Saskatoon: Mendel Art Gallery, 1987
(exhibition catalog).
Bruce, David, Sun Pictures: The Hill-Adamson Calotypes,
London: Studio Vista, 1973; Greenwich, Conn.: New York
Graphic Society, 1974.
Daniel, Malcolm, “‘The Pictures Are as Rembrandt’s but
Improved’: Calotypes by David Octavius Hill and Robert
Adamson,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, 56:4,
1999, 12–23
Ford, Colin and Roy Strong, An Early Victorian Album: The
Hill/Adamson Collection, London, Jonathan Cape, 1974; as
An Early Victorian Album: The Photographic Masterpieces
(1843–1847) of David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson,
New York: Knopf, 1976.
Michaelson, Katherine, A Centenary Exhibition of the Work of
David Octavius Hill 1802–1870 and Robert Adamson 1821-
1848 , Edinburgh: Scottish Arts Council, 1970 (exhibition
catalog).
Naef, Weston (ed.), In Focus: Hill and Adamson, Photographs
from the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty
Museum, 1999.
Rodger, Robin H., The Remarkable Mr Hill: David Octavius Hill
RSA, Perth: Perth Museum and Art Gallery, 2002 (exhibition
catalog).
Schwarz, Heinrich, David Octavius Hill, Master of Photogra-
phy, translated by Helene E. Fraenkel, London: George G.
Harrap, 1932.
Simpson, Roddy, Hill and Adamson’s Photographs of Linlith-
gow, Linlithgow: West Lothian History and Amenity Society,
2002.
Stevenson, Sara, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson:
Catalogue of Their Calotypes Taken between 1843 and 1847
in the Collection of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery,
Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 1981.
Stevenson, Sara, Hill and Adamson’s “The Fishermen and Women
of the Firth of Forth,” Edinburgh: Scottish National Portrait
Gallery, 1991 (exhibition catalog).
Stevenson, Sara, Facing the Light: The Photography of Hill &
Adamson, Edinburgh: Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 2002
(exhibition catalog).
Ward, John and Sara Stevenson, Printed Light: The Scientifi c
Art of William Henry Fox Talbot and David Octavius Hill
with Robert Adamson, Edinburgh: Scottish National Portrait
Gallery, 1986.HILL, REVEREND LEVI L. (1816–1865)
In 1850, the Reverend Levi Hill, (a clergyman taking
daguerreotypes professionally in Westkill, New York),
produced coloured images, which were authenticated
by the editor of the Daguerreian Journal, who called
them Hillotypes. Professional photographers demanded
details of the process, but Hill emphasised that he would
not divulge his procedures until the proper time, which
caused some scepticism.
Two years later, Hill published a statement to the
daguerreotypists, which was also available to the Ameri-
can public. He repeated his claim for colour daguerreo-
types, but admitted that his uncertainties continued.
Exasperated by the decline in sales caused by the fi rst
announcement, professionals accused Hill of deception.
In 1856, Hill attempted a clarifi cation, but according to
Beaumont Newhall, it was “a confused and complicated
piece of writing.”
On Hill’s death in 1865, Humphrey’s Journal of
Photography expressed a sympathetic valediction. The
writer did not contest Hill’s achievement, but suggested
the colour was the result of a fortuitous combination of
chemicals, which he had never been able to replicate.
The recent rediscovery of a significant number of
Hillotypes in the archives of the Smithsonian Institu-
tion, Washington, vindicates Hill’s claims to have been
successful, and recent experiments in the U.S. and the
UK have managed to replicate his achievements with
some success.
Ron Callender