David Octavius Hill

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Scottish photographic partnership formed in 1843 by David Octavius Hill (b Perth, 1802; d Edinburgh, 17 May 1870) and Robert Adamson (b St Andrews, 26 April 1821; d St Andrews, 18 Jan 1848). The partnership lasted little more than four years from June 1843 but is one of the most remarkable associations in photographic history. Their complementary skills achieved results with the primitive calotype process that have served as a standard and challenge to later photographers.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

Hill, David Octavius (1802-70), Scottish painter, and Adamson, Robert (1821-48), Scottish photographer, whose partnership in the 1840s was an extraordinary creative collaboration. They met in May 1843, when a formal dispute within the Church of Scotland caused the withdrawal of some 450 ministers, who formed the Free Church of Scotland. Hill greatly admired the action, saw it as morally highly significant, and determined to paint it. Whilst he was engaged in sketching the meetings, he encountered Sir David Brewster, who urged him to consider working with Adamson.

Adamson arrived in Edinburgh on 10 May. His studio was a south-facing garden at Rock House on Calton Hill, 300 m (1, 000 ft) above sea level. Hill met Adamson, and they made trial calotypes of the individual ministers and groups. They were both impressed, and entered into partnership in July. In 1843 they worked both independently and with other painters. They also employed an assistant, Miss Mann (fl. 1840s-1850s). In the spring of 1844 they probably entered into a closer partnership, planning the publication of six books of calotypes on the fishing life of the Firth of Forth, Highland character and costume, the architecture of Edinburgh and Glasgow, Scottish castles and abbeys, and Scottish portraits. Perhaps for reasons of technical difficulty or cost, none was published, although Hill and Adamson did publish views of St Andrews in 1846. In 1844 they commissioned new equipment from the instrument maker Thomas Davidson (1798-1878), including a camera that could take architectural prints 43 × 32.5 cm (16 × 13 in). With this they also took radical portrait calotypes of figures like the Revd Dr Thomas Chalmers and the boys at Merchiston Castle School, and they carried it down to York for the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

In 1845-6 Hill attempted to promote the calotypes through articles written by Dr John Brown and Elizabeth Rigby (later Lady Eastlake). In 1845, he sent a portfolio to London where it was seen and applauded. Hill then tried to market an album of 100 calotypes as a model of the artistic use of photography. Some of these were set up and bound, but may never have been sold. In 1846 the calotypes included pictures taken at Edinburgh Castle. In mid-1846 the studio work seems to have slowed. Adamson may have fallen ill at this point and there are few calotypes datable to 1847. At the end of that year, he returned to St Andrews, and died the following January. Within three to four years, the partners took more than 3, 000 calotypes, of an aesthetic and technical excellence which profoundly influenced later practice in Scotland and abroad.

— Sara F. Stevenson

Featured article: Hill and Adamson The Newhaven Calotypes.

— Sara F. Stevenson

Bibliography

• Stevenson, S., Hill and Adamson's ‘The Fishermen and Women of the Firth of Forth’ (1991)

Bibliography

• Schwarz, H., David Octavius Hill: Master Photographer (1932).
• Bruce, D., Sun Pictures: The Hill-Adamson Calotypes (1973).
• Ford, C., and Strong, R., An Early Victorian Album: The Photographic Masterpieces of David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson (1974).
• Stevenson, S., The Personal Art of David Octavius Hill (2002).
• ‘David Octavius Hill’, History of Photography, 27 (2003)

Hill, Robert (b W. Babylon, NY, 5 Feb. 1961). US dancer and choreographer. He began training aged 17 in Florida Hill and won a scholarship to the School of American Ballet. After a further year's study at the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts he made his debut with Atlantic Contemporary Ballet before joining American Ballet Theatre in 1982. He was appointed soloist in 1986 then performed with New York City Ballet (1989-90), Royal Ballet (1990-2), and with La Scala, Scottish Ballet, and San Francisco Ballet, returning to ABT as principal in 1994. He has danced both the classical and 20th-century repertories, though an injury which kept him off the stage (1992-4) has limited his range. He has created several roles including Morris's Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes (1988) and Kudelka's Cruel World (1994). He created his first ballet for ABT in 1999, Baroque Game (mus. Dmitry Polischuk) and teaches for ABT and Ailey's company.

The Scottish painter and arts activist David Octavius Hill (1802 – May 17, 1870) collaborated with the engineer and photographer Robert Adamson between 1843 and 1847 to pioneer many aspects of photography in Scotland.

Photograph from the frontispiece of an album dated 1848, showing D O Hill sketching in Greyfriars Kirkyard, watched by the Misses Morris. Other tableaux in the same setting included The Artist and The Gravedigger

Contents 1 Early life 2 Free Church of Scotland 3 Photography studio 4 External links 5 Source

Early life

David Octavius Hill was born in 1802 in Perth. His father, a bookseller and publisher, helped to re-establish Perth Academy and David was educated there as were his brothers. When his older brother Alexander joined the publishers Blackwood's in Edinburgh, David went there to study at the School of Design. He learnt lithography and produced Sketches of Scenery in Perthshire which was published as an album of views. His landscape paintings were shown in the Institution for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Scotland, and he was among the artists dissatisfied with the Institution who established a separate Scottish Academy in 1829 with the assistance of his close friend Henry Cockburn. A year later Hill took on unpaid secretarial duties. He sought commissions in book illustration, with four sketches being used to illustrate The Glasgow and Garnkirk Railway Prospectus in 1832, and went on to provide illustrations for editions of Walter Scott and Robert Burns. In 1836 the Royal Scottish Academy began to pay him a salary as secretary, and with this security he married his fiancée Ann Macdonald in the following year, but she was not strong and after the birth of their daughter she became an invalid. He continued to produce illustrations and to paint landscapes on commission.

Free Church of Scotland

The Disruption of 1843 was painted by Hill.

Clergymen who had been at the assembly, photographed at Dumbarton Presbytery in 1845 as the basis for their portraits in the top left row of the painting.

Hill was present at the Disruption Assembly in 1843 when over 450 ministers walked out of the Church of Scotland assembly and down to another assembly hall to found the Free Church of Scotland. He decided to record the dramatic scene with the encouragement of his friend Lord Cockburn and another spectator, the physicist Sir David Brewster who suggested using the new invention, photography, to get likenesses of all the ministers present. Brewster was himself experimenting with this technology which only dated back to 1839, and he introduced Hill to another enthusiast, Robert Adamson. Hill and Adamson took a series of photographs of those who had been present and of the setting. The 5 foot x 11 foot 4 inches (1.53m x 3.45m) painting was eventually completed in 1866.

Photography studio

Their collaboration, with Hill providing skill in composition and lighting, and Adamson considerable sensitivity and dexterity in handling the camera, proved extremely successful, and they soon broadened their subject matter. Adamson's studio, "Rock House", on Calton Hill in Edinburgh became the centre of their photographic experiments. Using the Calotype process, they produced a wide range of portraits depicting well-known Scottish luminaries of the time, including Hugh Miller, both in the studio and in outdoors settings, often amongst the elaborate tombs in Greyfriars Kirkyard.

Fishwives in St Andrews bait their lines.

Newhaven fishergirls pose with a creel.

They photographed local and Fife landscapes and urban scenes, including images of the Scott Monument under construction in Edinburgh. As well as the great and the good, they photographed ordinary working folk, particularly the fishermen of Newhaven, and the fishwives who carried the fish in creels the 3 miles (5 km) uphill to the city of Edinburgh to sell them round the doors, with their cry of "Caller herrin" (fresh herring). They produced several groundbreaking "action" photographs of soldiers and - perhaps their most famous photograph - two priests walking side by side.

Their partnership produced around 3000 prints, but was cut short after only four years due to the ill health and untimely death of Adamson in 1848. The calotypes faded under sunlight, so had to be kept in albums, and though Hill continued the studio for some months, he became less active and abandoned the studio, though he continued to sell prints of the photographs and to use them as an aid for composing paintings. In 1862 he remarried, to the sculptress Amelia Paton, and around that time took up photography again, but the results were more static and less successful than his collaboration with Adamson. He was badly affected by the death of his daughter and his work slowed. In 1866 he finished the Disruption picture which received wide acclaim, though many of the participants had died by then. The photographer F.C. Annan produced fine reduced facsimiles of the painting for sale throughout the Free Church, and a group of subscribers raised £1,200 to purchase the painting for the church. In 1869 illness forced him to give up his post as secretary to the R.S.A., and he died in May 1870.

D. O. Hill is buried in Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh - one of the finest Victorian cemeteries in Scotland. He is portrayed in a bust sculpted by his second wife, Amelia R Paton.

External links

• Works in the National Galleries of Scotland

Source

• Michaelson, Katherine, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, catalogue for Scottish Arts Council exhibitions, 1970.

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