731
of Early Photography at Harvard University are the only
other known examples of this very rare work.
Will Stapp
See also: Architecture; and Itinerant Photographers.
Further Reading
The Richard Morris Hunt Papers, American Architectural Foun-
tain, Washington, D.C.
The Baker Family Papers, Cincinnati Historical Society, Cincin-
nati, Ohio.
The Mixter Family Papers, Cincinnati Historical Society, Cin-
cinnati, Ohio.
Anninger, Anne, and Julie Melby. Salts of Silver, Toned with
Gold: The Harrison D. Horblit Collection of Early Photog-
raphy. Cambridge, MA: The Houghton Library, Harvard
University, 1999.
Hunter, Edith F.. “Information Sought on Leavitt Hunt 1831–
1907.” The Weathersfi eld Historical Society Newsletter, no.
37 (March 1999), 4–5.
The Octagon, the Museum of the American Architectural Founda-
tion, Washington, D.C.
Brochure for the 1999 exhibition A Voyage of Discovery: The
Nile Journal of Richard Morris Hunt, 1999.
Peres, Nissan. Focus East: Early Photography in the Near
East, 1839–1885. New York and Jerusalem, Isreal: Harry N.
Abrams, Inc., the Domino Press, and The Israel Museum,
1988.
HUNT, ROBERT (1807–1887)
Robert Hunt was a representative fi gure among the
‘men of science’ who played a prominent role in British
photography during the fi rst two decades of its exis-
tence. Hunt produced some photographs (chiefl y nature
prints of leaves, etc.) and developed a direct positive
paper that he marketed, but his principle contribution
to photography came from his pen and his role as an
organiser. He became interested in photography soon
after its announcement: experimenting with processes,
and publishing his fi ndings. The manuals he wrote
stemmed from this work. In 1841 he authored, what is
usually seen as the fi rst book on photography in English:
A Popular Treatise on the Art of Photography, following
this in 1844 with Researches on Light. During the 1840s
and 1850s he wrote a series of infl uential articles on the
photography in The Art-Union and its successor The
Art Journal. In 1847, Hunt was a founding member of
the Calotype Club. As a member of the group charged
with negotiating with William Henry Fox Talbot he also
played an important role in Talbot’s partial abandon-
ment of his patent claim on photography; in 1853 he
seconded the motion calling for the foundation of the
Photographic Society; and, in 1854, he served as Vice
President when the organisation was formed.
Hunt, described by the editor of the Art Journal as
a ‘self-raised man,’ trained with a London surgeon and
ran a medical dispensary before making his rise through
the scientifi c establishment to become Keeper at the
Mining Records Offi ce, and Professor of Mechanical
Science at the Royal School of Mines. Intellectually,
Hunt was a Utilitarian; an advocate of Natural Theology
and a partisan of the particle, or ‘corpuscular,’ theory
of light. He maintained, until the mid-1870s, that the
sun’s force was composed of three distinct elements:
heat, light and photographic power or “Energia,” a view
he propounded in his Researches on Light. This cluster
of commitments puts him at some distance from the
dominant Cambridge network (Talbot, Herschel etc.)
and fi nds the closest parallel in the work of Sir David
Brewster; indeed, there are many common themes in the
photographic writings of the two savants.
Hunt’s writing is, in one sense, typical of the period:
his early manuals mixed the most prosaic technical
descriptions of processes and banal history of inductive
discovery with wild fi gural passages (in one instance
peoples are attributed racial characteristics according
to their exposure to the sun’s rays). Nevertheless, it
is possible to draw out some structuring assumptions
from his writing. Hunt—in line with other prominent
men of science—viewed photographs as ‘light-drawn
pictures’ that were ‘geometrically true’ (Researches
on Light, 34). “Wherever a shadow falls,” he argued,
“a picture is impressed’ that demonstrates ‘unerring
fi delity” (278). In his account photographs are char-
acterised by “extreme fi delity,” and ‘minuteness’ and
the active agent is not the photographer—they were
untouched by “human handling”—but the sun or nature
who “impresses herself.” It was the absence of ‘mind’
or intellect in photographs that made them valuable as
copies. This approach constitutes, what historians of
science would see as, an “objective” vision in which a
seemingly automatic apparatus supplies the detached
scientifi c observer with unerring documents.
Hunt’s vision of photography shares two key features
with the account put forward by Brewster. Firstly, he in-
fl ected the standard fi guration of the sun as the principle
agent involved in the creation of photographs in an in-
dustrial direction. For him, the sun appeared as a natural
power (like steam) that could be harnessed by modern
science in the service of industry. The “Talbotype”
was, he said, “an instrument of new power placed at
the disposal of ingenuity and of Art, and which, as in
the case of the electrical machine and galvanic trough,
may be expected to suggest countless new applications
and developments of its principle” (“The Application
of the Talbotype,” 195). By “Art”he meant the me-
chanical arts or trades. Secondly, Hunt (like Brewster)
differed from Talbot and the Cambridge men in their
estimation of photography’s relation to the Fine Artist.
Talbot was, at best, ambiguous on this matter: largely
unconcerned with art he wanted an apparatus that would
mechanically substitute for skill with a pencil. Talbot’s