Some Notes on Photographic Exhibitions in Britain 1839-1865

The very first photographic exhibition to be seen in Britain was created by William Henry Fox Talbot, a member of the British landed gentry and the inventor of negative-positive photography on paper. The venue he selected was the Royal Institution, London and here on 25 January 1839, following the regular Friday evening lecture, the audience was invited to inspect the specimens of photogenic drawings that Talbot had set out in the library. Although we only have a sketchy account of what prints were exhibited and how the audience responded we can be more certain of Talbot’s intentions. His primary intention was to lay the results of his work with the ‘invention’ of photography before a receptive audience that would understand and value the significance of the “little bit of magic realised” that he offered for their examination. Six months later Talbot exhibited a further group of photogenic drawings at the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science held in Birmingham during August 1839. These annual meetings of the British Association were regarded as one of the pre-eminent events of the intellectual year when leading scientists, professors, natural philosophers and medical men came together for a week of lectures and debate that included mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, medical science and statistics. 	
The decision to print a list describing the fifty-six exhibits was doubtless influenced by the importance that Talbot attached to the occasion, and it is this which has provided us with the lasting evidence of an exhibition that was not widely recorded elsewhere. These two exhibitions fulfilled very different expectations for both Talbot and his audience. For Talbot, both exhibitions were strategically important in establishing the independence and precedence of his own work in the light of Daguerre’s claim to have invented photography. For his public, albeit a highly select and educated audience, the novelty of seeing images made solely by the agency of the light would have been sufficient to delight the imagination and make a deep and lasting impression.  

 At this point perhaps it would be helpful to specify what it is that constitutes an exhibition. One mid-nineteenth century dictionary helpfully defines the term as “a public display of whatever is interesting either as a matter of art or curiosity.” It is a definition that neatly accommodates the many different aims of exhibition organisers throughout the nineteenth century, ranging across a wide spectrum of human emotions and interests. Occupying the high moral ground were exhibitions of fine art, paintings, sculpture and engravings where the prerequisite for any visitor was an education and the refinement to apply it intelligently to the works displayed.  At the other extreme, representing the popular end of the market, were “exhibitions” that we would now regard as voyeuristic, having their roots in the culture of the fairground, and the freak show. Within this wide cultural context it is easy to understand how exhibitions were defined as much by their audience as by the works displayed. This was especially true in the case of photography, as it was capable being applied to many purposes and appealing to a variety of audiences. Throughout the mid-nineteenth century, photographic exhibitions were generally created with a specific audience in mind, whether for a highly selective few, as in the case of Talbot, or promoted with a more general appeal. In either case the exhibition would have been created to promote the aspirations, taste, and interests of its organisers. 

Only a handful of photographic exhibitions seem to have been staged between 1839 and 1850, and for the most part these were exhibitions in which a tiny number of photographs were shown amidst a vast and wide-ranging display of objects representing the applied arts and sciences and the commercial world of manufacture. The sole exception was an exhibition of daguerreotypes that Mayall had on show at his premises between 1847 and 1848 where it promoted his commercial portraiture. The process of transition that led photography exhibitions from their regional contexts into events of national significance can be traced to the influence of the Great Exhibition held in London during the summer of 1851. The exhibition was conceived by the Society of Arts, under the Presidency of Prince Albert, as a showcase that would draw together the products of the workshops of the world, on a scale that was unprecedented. Everything about the exhibition spoke of mass and was expressed in terms of statistics: the size of the building and the space it enclosed, the number of panes of glass used in its construction, the number of countries invited to exhibit, and the sheer magnitude of the raw materials, machinery, and finished products submitted for display. There were over a million exhibits submitted by some 17,000 exhibitors. Over six million visitors came to see the exhibition during the twenty-three weeks it was open, with a daily average of 43,536 visitors, It was calculated that at 2 o’clock on 7 October 1851 approximately 93,000 individuals were in the building; this was believed to be the largest concentration of people ever assembled within a roofed and windowed building and was hailed as one of the great achievements of the exhibition. 

  	Buried within this grand accumulation of the exhibition, and widely scattered throughout its various displays, were the photographs - probably over 700, though one can only guess at the precise number, as they were not catalogued individually. The dispersal of photographs resulted largely from the system of classification that imposed rigid criteria for the selection of exhibits. Within the “British Department,” photographs appeared within two areas representing two distinct classifications. “Class 10” embraced the wide disciplines of “Philosophical, Musical, Horological and Surgical Instruments”  and included astronomical, nautical, surveying, levelling instruments, lighthouses, dividing machines, telescopes and barometers as well as photographic cameras, lenses along with examples of the processes employed. The scope of the section was vast and it is likely that the photographs were regarded as marginal to the main body of exhibits with their complex machinery and glittering brass. “Class 30” was meant to show the most recent processes and techniques of the Fine Arts where the results were not to be judged on their artistic merit, but on their application and suitability to purpose. These broad and contradictory criteria proved difficult to enforce for how best to display materials and processes except through the finished work of art? Photography had its place within this classification as it was a process widely regarded as being equally applicable to the fine arts as to more practical purposes. Photographs also were shown among the exhibits of “Foreign States” where their inclusion was not subjected to the same system of classification that had been applied to British exhibits. Foreign photographers were selected by their respective countries to represent the finest work being made nationally. In the case of Britain, on the other hand, photographs were only accepted if they conformed to the classification system. Many leading practitioners of the day did not exhibit and as a result British photography as a whole was poorly represented. 
 
A key element of the Great Exhibition was the awarding of prize medals for excellence and artistic merit. There were individual juries for each of the thirty classes and each jury was given responsibility for awarding the prize medals in their class. When it came to photography the jury wisely considered the subject as a whole regardless of classification or country of origin and concluded that “never before was so rich a collection of photographic pictures brought together, the products of England, France, Austria and America.” Passing judgement on this body of work they claimed that “for daguerreotype portraits, America stands eminently forward; - France, first in order of merit for calotypes, or sun pictures.” As for Britain, the jury remarked, rather tellingly, she possessed “a distinct character of her own …presenting illustrations of nearly all the processes which have as yet been adopted.”  More prophetically they suggested that the exhibition itself would lead to “the advancement of this beautiful art, by showing us what has been done, and also indicating that which it is necessary yet to do [and]…mark an era from which to date many improvements.” Some months later James Glaisher, who had written the report for the Jury of Class 10, identified the key issue when he remarked that although this was largest collection of photographs to be brought together it was by no means “indicative of the existing state of photography in England.”  

Clearly the interests of British photography had not been served well by the Great Exhibition and the Society of Arts, perhaps sensing an opportunity to redress the situation, began to actively promote the cause of photography. In June 1852 it reported that a committee of “Mr Berger, Mr Fenton, Mr Le Neve Foster, Mr P. W. Fry, Mr Goodeve, Mr R. Hunt, Sir Wm. Newton, Dr. Percy and Professor Wheatstone, has been formed with a view of instituting a Photographic Society.” The committee’s principle objective was to place photography on the same footing as art, architecture, astronomy, chemistry, entomology, geology, and science, whose interests were represented by learned societies based in London. Standing in the way were Talbot’s photographic patents, which were generally regarded at the time as hindrances to the “rapid and successful progress of photography.” Despite Talbot’s willingness to support that aims of the Photographic Society, it nevertheless took several months of negotiation and a personal deputation from Lord Rosse and Sir Charles Eastlake before he relinquished his rights to pave the way for the formation of the Photographic Society. 

While the negotiations were underway, the publisher, Joseph Cundall, also an amateur photographer himself, proposed idea of a photographic exhibition to the Society of Arts. The idea was accepted and the date of 22 December 1852 fixed for its opening. Within a month Cundall, Phillip Delamotte and Roger Fenton, the principal organisers, had assembled almost four hundred photographs and prepared a detailed catalogue. The date for the opening coincided with a meeting of the Society of Arts when Roger Fenton delivered a paper outlining the future of photography. In this he sketched  “the present position and prospects of the art itself” drawing comparisons between British and French photography before closing with a special plea for the formation of a Photographic Society that was “within one step of complete organisation.” Such was the critical success of the exhibition that shortly after its opening a further group of prints was added, effectively doubling its size. A second edition of the catalogue was printed and the closing date extended until the end of January 1853. It was against the background of the exhibition (quite literally) that a group of “photographers, artists, and others interested in the progress of photographic art” met at the Society of Arts on the 20 January and agreed to the formation of a Photographic Society.  

Two further things need to be said about the exhibition. First, the design and layout of the catalogue followed a. style of presentation traditionally used for fine art exhibitions where the title of the work and name of the artist are followed by the name of the exhibitor (or owner) and the process used in its making. Except now, for photographs, it was the process used for making the negative that was given. This format became the common standard used by photographic exhibitions for the remainder of the century, and beyond. The second notable thing about the exhibition was that its selection was restricted to works on paper. There was not a daguerreotype to be seen. This must have been a conscious decision by Cundall, Delamotte and Fenton all of whom were in reality representing the interests of the Photographic Society whose ambition was to keep commercial and industrial applications subservient to the higher ideals of fine art. For everyone concerned the daguerreotype represented a branch of photographic practice more closely associated with trade than with intellectual refinement - a distinction that was to cause much distress and internecine warfare within the ranks of the Photographic Society during the coming decade. 

	The role of the Society of Arts in promoting photography during these crucial years has not been widely recognised. Their offer of “funds, rooms, officers and publications” from within their own existing organisation was rejected by the Photographic Society in favour of autonomy. Nevertheless the Society of Arts maintained their commitment to the future of photography by organising an exhibition they proposed to tour throughout the nation. This had been made possible through a scheme that affiliated mechanics institutions and literary and philosophical societies across Britain with the Society of Arts, bringing many new privileges and benefits within their grasp for the first time. The touring exhibition of photographs was the first of a number of initiatives through which the Society of Arts sought to benefit the regions.  The exhibition was a much-reduced version of the original 1852 exhibition and designed to appeal to an audience for whom a trip to London had been out of the question. Among its eighty-four prints, the largest coherent groups were the photographs of Ferrier and Owen used to illustrate the Reports by the Juries of the Great Exhibition, and a series of eight studies of Burnham Beeches by Sir William Newton. Studies of ancient buildings and rural idylls by leading British photographers echoed the topographic precedents of watercolorists and printmakers. The application of photography to art and science respectively were represented by a study of the Cellini Shield by Delamotte and Specimens of Microscopic Photography by the Rev. William T. Kingsley. Studies by Bresolin, Ferrier, Le Gray, Lodoisck, and Pretsch were reminders of the excellent work being done on the Continent.  

By early September 1853 a tour schedule of eighteen venues was announced, the choice apparently dictated by the logistics of the railway system used to move the exhibition from one venue to the next. The exhibition began its tour in south of England at Woburn after which it made its way as far north as Aberdeen, and as far south as the Isle of Wight. Inevitably, there were problems with delays, lost photographs and broken glass. Perhaps too much was expected of a railway system more experienced at handling milk, coal and gravel. One can picture the scene unloading the heavy crates of framed photographs at the railway siding where they would have been manhandled from truck to carrier’s wagon with nothing more sophisticated than brute strength and a trolley. Some venues dutifully replaced the glass and absorbed the cost, while others left the damage and exhibited the photographs behind cracked glass, whilst others argued that the cost should be claimed from the railway company.  

Despite these problems the Society of Arts was sufficiently encouraged by the general level of response to the exhibition to create two further sets of photographs, which they sent on tour to a total of thirty-three venues between April and October 1854. The number of photographs was increased to 129 in one set and to 121 in the other. In all other respects, the organisation, publicity and public reception of the works followed the original pattern, even down to recurring problems with broken glass. The addition of forty or so prints to each set gave the selectors the opportunity to explore new photographic territory by including more recent work and expanding the range of individual photographers. Roger Fenton took the opportunity to add a significant number of prints, bringing his total for each set to 24 and 22 respectively, giving him the greatest number of exhibits by far. The animal studies by the Comte de Montizon taken at Regent’s Park Zoological Gardens and the architectural studies of Constantinople made by James Robertson brought an exotic note to the exhibition. Further tours were planned for 1855/6, though sadly no tour schedule was published to record where the photographs were seen. 

Given the range and quality of the photographs, both exhibitions must have come as a great revelation to the majority of visitors, for even fifteen years after its announcement, photography was still only dimly understood. This was especially true in the smaller venues where photography remained largely unknown at seeing them for the first time can hardly be imagined. Furthermore, the cultural impact of such an exhibition should not be underestimated. Its arrival in some venues inspired local photographic activity, and in a few instances it may have been all that was needed to encourage local enthusiasts to establish their own photographic societies (an additional twenty were established throughout Britain by 1860). 

During this same period two other types of photographic exhibition reached the public. Perhaps the most influential of these was the first annual exhibition of the Photographic Society held at the Gallery of the Society of British Artists, Suffolk Street, London, where it opened for two months on 3 January 1854. In ambition, form, and content it followed the precedent of its 1852 predecessor and with 980 exhibits by British and European photographers, it was also its equal in scale. According to Fenton, the “greatest difficulty” had been experienced in finding a suitable venue. As it turned out, the rooms at the Society of British Artists provided the perfect setting, for here photographs could be judged as works of art, rather than as the productions of trade.   Once the Photographic Society established a pattern of annual exhibition this model was quickly adopted by other photographic societies whose exhibitions in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Manchester, Norwich, and elsewhere became a regular feature of the social calendar. Every photographic society allowed open submission to their annual exhibitions, even to non-members, as this was thought to raise the general level of excellence. A few societies made their exhibitions competitive, offering prize medals for excellence and merit. But the scheme occasionally resulted in controversy, especially when members felt outmatched by well-known photographers who consistently won awards fro their refined productions.  

The second type of exhibition to emerge was entirely commercial and based at the Photographic Institution which had been established during the early months of 1853 as a partnership between Joseph Cundall and Phillip Delamotte. At their premises in New Bond Street, London - an extremely prestigious address - they had a studio where Delamotte took Talbotype portraits, offered photographic instruction and undertook commercial printing on behalf of amateur photographers and others. Between 1853 and 1855, when Delamotte left to take up the post of Professor of Drawing and Perspective at King’s College, London, they collaborated on a significant number of publications, including photographic manuals and print portfolios. 

	The Photographic Institution exhibition, which opened in late April 1853, was considered “a very considerable advance upon the collection…exhibited a few months since at the Society of Arts.Another wrote: “The pictures are not so numerous, but they have been selected with real judgement, and really show us what the art is capable of.”  Delamotte was responsible for the selection and he doubtless drew upon his experiences with the Society of Arts exhibition. The walls were hung with some two hundred and fifty framed examples with three extensive portfolios available for inspection – in all, over 350 prints were offered for sale. The range of work on offer was quite exceptional with significant numbers of photographs by leading British, French, and Continental photographers. Although it was never mentioned in any of the critical reviews, where it was discussed in terms of artistic merit alone, the exhibition was nevertheless underpinned by commercial imperatives, which only become evident in the catalogue where prints are individually priced. The cheapest prints sold for three shillings and the most expensive were two guineas, with a fair spread of prices between. It is impossible to know what dictated this pricing structure and to what extent size, subject and fashion played their part. What distinguished a print of the Hospital, Venice by Domenico Bresolin at fifteen shillings, from his study of The Rialto, Venice at twenty-one shillings? All else being equal, it was probably the relative size of prints that dictated their price, for what else could have justified the difference? 

What the Photographic Institution sought to establish through this exhibition was the idea that photography should be considered equal to fine art printmaking, which, during this period, enjoyed widespread acceptance among the upper reaches of society. The emergence of photography into the traditional arena of print selling began tentatively during the mid-1840’s with the sale of Talbot’s sun pictures, but it was only in 1850’s that the serious commercial opportunities offered by photography began to be fully exploited. In addition to well-known printsellers taking up with photography, numerous high-class stationers, booksellers and philosophical instrument makers also entered the market. What distinguished the Photographic Institution from others in the field was their early emergence into the field and the decision to concentrate exclusively upon photography. Cundall’s background as an entrepreneur and Delamotte’s as an artist, combined with their experience as photographers, helped secure the position of the Photographic Institution as the pre-eminent centre for photography in London.

	Two years later, in 1855, Roger Fenton’s extensive series of photographs of the Crimean War was sent on tour throughout Britain. Consisting of 360 prints, this was by far the largest and most comprehensive body of work to be exhibited by a single photographer throughout the nineteenth century. Its impressive scale perhaps reflected the intense patriotic fervour that drew the nation together and helped families come to terms with the grievous losses incurred by the deadly combination of military incompetence and crippling disease. The catalogue tells us that Fenton’s photographic record was intended to “illustrate faithfully the Scenery of the Camps; to display prominent incidents of Military Life, as well as to perpetuate those distinguished Officers, English and French, who have taken part in the ever memorable Siege of Sebastapol.” Thomas Agnew and Sons, printsellers and publishers, financed the venture and Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and the Emperor of the French gave their patronage. Armed with these credentials Fenton enjoyed quasi-official status while working in the Crimea. 

	The involvement of Agnew and Sons meant the project had to show a financial return and it was they who organised the touring exhibition to advertise the series of ten portfolios they had published. The exhibition opened in Pall Mall, London in September 1855, moving to two other venues in Pall Mall and Piccadilly before closing in May 1856. An identical exhibition opened in Manchester during November 1855, while other versions were shown in Leeds, Gloucester, Yeovil, Exeter and Liverpool during 1855 and 1856. Despite Agnew’s commercial ambitions with the touring exhibitions, the enterprise proved an economic failure. Following the fall of Sebastapol in September 1855 and the signing of the peace treaty in March 1856, the public quickly wearied of the war and the high price of the portfolios must also have played its part. Few families could afford to spend twenty-one pounds on fifty Views of the Camps, let alone six guineas on the Panorama of the Plateau of Sebastapol. To recover some of the costs the remaining stocks of prints, together with the negatives, were sold by auction in December 1856. 

	Although the exhibition failed commercially, it undoubtedly did much to enhance Fenton’s photographic reputation and subsequent career. Already known through the pages of the Illustrated London News, and his exploits in the Crimea made him a household name among the middle classes and something of a national figure. Other photographers followed his example, with Robertson opening his exhibition of Crimean views in London in December 1855 at the premises of W. Kilburn, the celebrated daguerreotypist, who by this date had also ventured into photographic publishing. It was not until July 1862 before another exhibition of this specific type was seen in London, when Francis Bedford opened his Photographic Pictures of Egypt, The Holy Land and Syria, Constantinople, the Mediterranean, Athens, &c., taken during the Tour in the East at the German Gallery, Bond Street. Bedford had been commissioned by Queen Victoria to act as the official photographer of the educational journey planned for the Prince of Wales during the spring of 1862. The trip was fraught with difficulties, for the strict itinerary meant Bedford frequently had to take photographs under imperfect conditions. Nevertheless he produced over 200 large format negatives, 172 of which were selected for display. The exhibition was promoted by Day & Sons, lithographers to the Queen (Bedford had worked as an artist on some of their most elaborate publications).   

	 The impression that emerges from this brief survey is that photographic exhibitions meant far more than the old dictionary definition of “a public display of whatever is interesting either as a matter of art or curiosity.” In every instance the form and purpose of an exhibition was of crucial importance to both photographer and the organising body. Exhibitions were equally important to the way in which photography was perceived and understood by the general public, for whom photography was more commonly associated with commercial portraiture. For those photographers who worked within the established framework of a photographic society, the annual exhibition imposed a certain routine: Taking photographs during the summer months and then preparing work for exhibition at the onset of winter. Since many exhibitions accepted work by open submission, an enterprising and ambitious photographer could submit photographs to several venues and reach the widest possible audience. Henry Peach Robinson showed his celebrated study of a young woman dying of consumption entitled Fading Away in Edinburgh, Glasgow and London, during the 1858-59 season and then again at the 1862 International Exhibition, London. Most often it was the photographer themselves who submitted their prints, but on occasion it was a collector or printseller who sent in work. One example is the industrialist and collector Robert P. Greg who lent fifty prints by British and European photographers to the first exhibition of the Manchester Photographic Society in 1856. He might well have bought these from John Clowes Grundy, a well-respected Manchester printseller who also submitted sent work by leading French photographers to the same exhibition.

Photographic exhibitions appealed not only to the immediate circle of photographic society membership. It attracted the general public as well, who were encouraged during the 1850’s by the critical reviews that appeared with increasing frequency in the daily, weekly and specialist press. Many of these reviews tended to be uncritical, especially those which appeared in the official publications of photographic societies where the sensitivities of members perhaps mattered more than honest criticism. As a consequence, submissions to most photographic exhibitions began to conform increasingly to a set of commonly held ideals, the lingua franca of amateur practice, distinguishing this class of photographer from those working in trade. This social and class division was most evident at the Photographic Society. Repeatedly, the governing body of the society sought to keep down, or marginalise the work of commercial studios and others that sold their work for profit. But these efforts were to prove futile as increasing numbers of studio photographers joined the Society. It was not as if these photographers were any less worthy; many of them were eminent portraitists running highly successful businesses. It was their very success in business that lay at the root of the problem. In the eyes of Victorian society there was real need to distinguish between those who were in trade and those who were not. The general level of anxiety about upward social mobility, the inexorable rise of the middle classes whose evolution was regarded as something of a threat to the established order. and maintain a balanced society. By its very nature, photography became a part of these social changes, for it was a medium that did not distinguish between individuals possessing a high level of education and artistic training and others of more humble origin who sought to master its secrets. Anyone with sufficient capital and ambition could set himself up as a commercial portrait photographer, and many did so. The official census of 1861 for the first time included photographers as a “new occupation,” heralding their emergence among the commercial classes of society.  

	Elsewhere, other forces were at work. The commissioners of the 1862 International Exhibition, the first in Britain since the Great Exhibition, proposed that in common with other manufactures, photographs would be exhibited alongside the cameras and not among the fine art displays. Not surprisingly, this decision caused an outcry, as many felt photography was being unjustly classified together with machinery. Letters flew back and forth between the commissioners and the Photographic Society. In the end, an advisory committee was formed, views were exchanged and a compromise eventually reached. Photographs were given a picture gallery of their own, not adjacent to the Fine Art Courts, but up several flights of stairs and popularly known as the “photographic garret.” The space proved inadequate; it was poorly lit, and damage to the prints from a leaking roof proved the final ignominy. The Photographic Society put on a brave face and made the best of the circumstances, but it was clear to all that fine art photography had not been well represented at the International Exhibition. After 1862 the Photographic Society no longer held the respect and authority that it once enjoyed, for within the space of a decade all the high ideals and aspirations of its founding members all but evaporated under the intense heat of commercial competition. By the time of the tenth annual exhibition, held in 1864, the numbers of submissions were down by sixty percent and examples of commercial portraiture were increasingly evident. 

	Some photographers, like Fenton, gave up photography completely. Others sought more congenial quarters in the new photographic societies and associations that had been formed during the late 1850’s to meet the needs of those photographers who wished to be free and independent of the Photographic Society. Pre-eminent among these was the Amateur Photographic Association, founded in 1861, with the Prince of Wales as its president and four noblemen and an eminent scientist as vice-presidents. This was an association unashamedly aligned with amateur practice and organised strictly along lines of class and privilege. Here the high ideals and aspirations that had originally led to the burgeoning of photographic exhibitions throughout Britain found a happy and contented refuge, secure from the threats of commerce and innovation, and with this shift of emphasis the first flowering of photographic exhibitions effectively came to a close.