He resorted to photography only as an aid for executing an unusual assignment that he was given in 1843. He was commissioned to paint a group portrait of the 457 man and women who participated in the founding convention of the free church of Scotland in Edinburgh.
At the suggestion of his friend Sir David Brewster, Hill decided first to photograph all the delegates individually, and then to use the resulting pictures as guides for the rendering their facial features correctly in the painting of the group.
He was fortunate in securing the cooperation of a competent photographer, Robert Adamson, who had opened a photographic studio in Edinburgh a short time earlier. Even though the photographs were initially intended as a short of memory aid, the two men did not concentrate exclusively on the facial features of their clients. Instead they created elaborate and well composed portraits in the style of painted portraits of their time.
Some of their portraits, those that show ladies robed in luxuriant silk garments, are even reminiscent of Dutch painting of the 17th century.
Nearly all the portraits were made outdoors, with exposure times of several minutes. As backdrops they used an open air studio on Carlton Hill and the baroque monument of Greyfriars Cemetery.
No comments:
Post a Comment