[John Stevens R.S.A.]

John Stevens (about 1793-1868), a member of the Royal Scottish Academy, was both a painter and a sculptor. As if to indicate his double career, he is posed here holding a paintbrush and standing beside one of his sculptures, a large bust known as The Last of the Romans (see also 84.XO.734.4.5.21). Hill and Adamson (David Octavius Hill [1802-70] and Robert Adamson [1821-48]) exhibited a calotype of Stevens at the Academy in 1845, along with nine other portraits.

The photographers had exhibited work at the Edinburgh gallery owned by Hill’s brother, Alexander Hill (1800-66) as early as July 1843. They first showed their calotypes at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1844. That same year, examples could be seen at Mr. Grundy's Repository of the Arts in Liverpool and even as far afield as the Académie des Sciences in Paris. Clearly Hill and Adamson had serious intentions of marketing their work; Hill sent prints to Dominic Colnaghi (1790-1879), a London dealer, early in 1845, and to John Murray, a London publisher, in 1846. In spite of these efforts, the artists achieved little commercial success.

Anne M. Lyden. Hill and Adamson, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1999), 30. ©1999, J. Paul Getty Museum.