William Hemsley, Another Artist Whose Work Inspired Stereoscopic Photographers – The Stereoscopy Blog

Long before I started working on the book “The Poor Man’s Picture Gallery” [1] I had been interested in the connections between painting, photography and stereoscopy and never missed an opportunity to trace the source of a staged stereoscopic scene to some artwork which may have been famous back in the Victorian era but had gradually been forgotten or looked down upon as new schools of painting appeared. I never had the opportunity, however, to go through every single illustrated magazine of the time, be it English, French or German [2], in order to purposely look for images I could connect to stereoscopic photographs in my personal collection or in the one I have been in charge of curating for over a decade. I am certain doing so would eventually pay off and teach us more about the close relationship between photography, stereoscopy and painting, but it would take years before one could complete such a task and it would necessitate having access to every single one of the aforementioned magazines. It is far from impossible, especially these days when a lot of nineteenth century publications have been digitized and can be found online, but still excessively time-consuming.

I have been fortunate to have been able to leaf through hundreds of those magazines over the years – either physically or online – and never failed to bookmark or take a screenshot or snapshot of the page in which I would find a picture that reminded me of a stereoscopic photograph. That’s how “The Poor Man’s Picture Gallery” was born and that’s also how I have been able, since its publication, to write several articles about other photographs [3], the sources of which I was able to trace back to long-forgotten paintings.

I have discovered over the years that on top of going through illustrated publications, a good source for finding about paintings that were once popular was to look at cartes-de-visite and … microphotographs. The latter, once very much in demand, are fewer and much more difficult to come across; they also necessitate owning a microscope in order to view the contents of the tiny piece of sensitised collodion on which the picture was recorded before being mounted on a microscope slide. Photographing said image raises other issues which, fortunately, have now been made easier to solve thanks to digital microscopes which come with a display screen doubling as a camera and a micro SD on which pictures can be stored and recovered. I have recently acquired one, which makes researching microphotographs much easier.

The paintings I am going to write about today, however, were not found with the help of cartes-de-visite or microphotographs but thanks to the good old Illustrated London News, a 26 year run of which we are very fortunate to have in the archive [4]. I must admit everything started with a totally different search. I was trying to find the woodcut of a sculpture seen in a daguerreotype taken at the Sydenham Crystal Palace when I chanced upon a page with the following picture:

Illustration 1. “A Fix – Black to Move” by William Hemsley. The Illustrated London News, 5 March 1853, p. 184. Author’s collection.

I confess I had never heard of William Hemsley before that day but it took less than a second for this picture to bring to mind a stereoscopic card I am very familiar with for having seen it several times in different collections, including mine, in some of its different versions: The March of Intellect, or Old Bull in a Fix. “Now, Grandfather, it’s your move.”, by photographer Martin Laroche.

Illustration 2. “The March of Intellect, or Old Bull in a Fix” by William Henry Silvester, a.k.a. Martin Laroche. Front and back. Author’s collection.

Illustration 3. “The March of Intellect, or Old Bull in a Fix” by William Henry Silvester, a.k.a. Martin Laroche. Variant of the previous card. Author’s collection.

If you have read The Poor Man’s Picture Gallery, you may remember that Laroche was the pseudonym of William Henry Silvester (1814 – 1886), elder brother to the more famous and more prolific Alfred Silvester (1831 – 1886) who also published under the shorter alias Phiz. Laroche is best remembered for his stereos of the actors from Charles Kean’s company in Shakespeare’s Richard the Third, Henry V, or A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but also for his humorous take on the 1857-8 Ghost in the Stereoscope craze. His composition, “The Original Ghost, kindly suggested by an Old Boy”, not only makes fun of the trend for ghost photographs but also of Sir David Brewster, the “old boy” of the caption, who explained how to make stereoscopic see-through ghosts in chapter XIV of his 1856 book “The Stereoscope, its History, Theory and Construction”. The ghost stereoscopic photographs published from 1857 onwards by the London Stereoscopic Company often bear the mention “kindly suggested by Sir David Brewster, K.H.”.

A quick search on William Hemsley (1817 or 1819 – 1906) revealed that he was indeed stereoscopic-photographs material since he specialized in rustic domestic scenes, a lot of them featuring children. He was famous in his time, very prolific (at least 120 paintings by him have been listed) and exhibited regularly, not only at the Royal Academy but also at the British Institution and at the gallery of the Society of British Artists of which he was the vice president for several years. A number of his works were also displayed at the 1862 and 1867 International Exhibitions, respectively held in London and Paris.

According to the person who wrote the third review of the 1853 exhibition of the British Institution, “ ‘A Fix – Black to Move,’ by W. Hemsley, represents a little incident, the humour of which will be relished by all draught-players, and all who can enter into the feeling of a man who finds himself out-generalled at a game of skill by a mere child. The ‘posed’ look of the former, and the uncontrollable delight and triumph of the latter, which is participated in by his younger sister, are capitally hit off. The execution of the various  details is minute and accurate. Our readers will thank us for engraving this telling little morceau.” [5]

Laroche was quite faithful to the original painting although he chose to show the legs of the three protagonists of the tableau. I have not seen the original painting – the location of which seems to be a mystery – or a photograph of it but it appears that the man in Hemsley’s painting barely looks old enough to be the children’s grandfather. Could he be their father ? Laroche chose to make the draught-player older but interestingly enough, in a second version of the painting Hemsley himself represented an older and balder man playing against children of about the same age as in the first painting. Hand-painted copies of this second version can be seen – and bought – online (

Illustration 4. A second and probably later version of A Fix – Blak to Move. Picture found online without any mention of a date.

It is easy to see the composition has changed drastically. The subjects are seen from farther away and are all shown full length. One can see more of the room they are playing in and there is a cat lying on the flagstones. Not having found the date of this second composition I do not know whether the artist changed the composition after having seen Laroche’s photograph or if it is just a case of two great minds thinking alike.

It is easy to see, when looking at reproductions of Hemsley paintings in the press of the time – mainly The London Illustrated News and The Illustrated News of the World but also Harper’s Weekly – how stereoscopic photographers would have been interested in re-staging some of Hemsley’s compositions in their studios. A lot of them only show a few characters usually engaged in occupations which are not difficult to reproduce and use relatively few props. Here are a couple of examples, among dozens of others:

Illustration 5 . “The Rustic Artist drawing from Nature”, published on page 517 of The Illustrated London News on 10 July 1852. Author’s collection.

Illustration 6. “Hook my Frock”, published in The Illustrated News of the World, on 10 April 1858. Author’s collection.

This begs the question: apart from A Fix – Black to Move, were any other paintings by Hemsley actually used as a source for other stereoscopic cards ? There were. I have at least found three more but there may be others as the titles of the cards and those of the paintings do not always match, which makes it difficult to search them. Take “The Schoolboy”, for instance. Hemsley’s work shows a boy sitting on a small barrel and holding a slate on which he has drawn in chalk a very basic human shape. This painting was re-staged by Birmingham photographer Michael Burr and released under the different title “Neglected Genius”. It was also published under the same title by another, unidentified, photographer.

Illustration 7. “Neglected Genius” by Michael Burr. Brian May Archive of Stereoscopy.

Illustration 8. “Neglected Genius” by an unidentified photographer. Author’s collection.

Another stereoscopic card which I remembered seeing as soon as I caught a glimpse of the reproduction of one of Hemsley’s paintings online (it is one of the upsides of having a photographic memory) was even trickier to find since it does not have any title at all. I could see the picture clearly in my mind’s eye and I knew who the publisher was but spotting it in the archive took longer because of the lack of caption. It is by French publisher Alexis Gaudin and was definitely inspired by Hemsley’s “From our Correspondent”, a work which was presented at the 1856 exhibition of the British Institution.

Illustration 9. “From Our Correspondent” by William Hemsley, published in The Illustrated London News on 22 March 1856. Brian May Archive of Stereoscopy.

Illustration 10. Alexis Gaudin’s rendering of Hemsley’s painting. It comes without any kind of caption. Brian May Archive of Stereoscopy.

There is no doubt that the photographer remained faithful to Hemsley’s original composition, down to the ball on the wooden floor, but he made one important change. The main character here is the old veteran who is listening with some difficulty – he has his left hand cupped on his left ear as he seems to be a little hard of hearing – to a boy reading an article from a newspaper. The description accompanying this woodcut reads: “Our fourth illustration, ‘From Our Own Correspondent,’ is a picture suggested by the Crimean news, and by the far-famed ‘Chelsea Pensioners’ of Wilkie, now at Apsley House. An old Peninsular veteran is seen eagerly listening (in spite of his deafness) to the thrilling news which is read to him of the battle of Inkerman and Balaclava [6]. It is told by Mr. W. Hemsley, and exhibits in very happy union the contrasts of age and youth. The veteran is obviously thinking, at the same time, of other battles in which he had his part, and seems secretly, with all his admiration for what he hears, to prefer some of his own hairbreadth escapes to those thrilling ones which he is hearing read to him. The accessories, throughout are painstakingly rendered. [7]

Alexis Gaudin’s photograph clearly shows the old veteran  – in exactly the same attitude as in Hemsley’s painting – his daughter and granddaughter, but the boy on the left has been replaced by an older girl who is not reading a newspaper but what looks like a Bible or could alternatively be a volume of an illustrated magazine. Why this drastic change in the story told by Hemsley ? Did the photographer think reminding people of the losses in lives during the Crimean war would be too painful for some ? We will never know for certain but it sure makes the photograph all the more interesting.

The two stereoscopic cards I found after another composition of Hemsley’s do not have such a tragic background story. Each one, however, was inspired by a different half of Hemsley’s title to his original painting. The latter is called “The Village Postman – ‘Nothing, I’m afraid this morning, Miss” and was exhibited in 1867. It shows a rural postman looking through the pack of letters he has to deliver to this remote village and, standing next to him, a young woman obviously expecting to hear from someone. In the background a top-hatted gentleman – probably the young lady’s father and possibly the incumbent or curate of the village according to the journalist who reviewed the painting in the ILN – is walking away, while reading from a book he is holding.

Illustration 11. “The Village Postman – ‘Nothing, I’m afraid this morning, Miss.” Full-page woodcut published in The Illustrated London News, on 6 July 1867. Author’s collection. 

Now 1867 is rather late for English staged scenes of a sentimental nature and even though Michael Burr went on publishing genre views until the mid 1876 I did not find photographic renderings of Hemsley’s painting in Britain but on the other side of the Pond, in the United States. The first one was made by Littleton photographer Franklin George Weller (1833 – 1877) and is aptly entitled “The Village Postman”. It is a very simple composition, undoubtedly after Hemsley’s, and conveys the same feelings as the original does, the main difference being in the respective heights of the postman and the young woman. I think Weller’s photograph would have been better had he chosen a smaller model for the girl who, as it is, looks quite formidable and not as shy as her painted English counterpart.

Illustration 12. “The Village Postman”, by Littleton photographer Franklin George Weller. Front and part of back. Author’s collection. 

The second half of Hemsley’s title was also photographically illustrated in the States, by a photographer whom I have not identified yet. The image is called “Village Postman – I guess not this morning, Miss” and has a fairly different composition from Hemsley’s artwork. There are few props and just a painted backdrop but there is a second female character added. On the whole it is a pleasant picture, but there is one jarring note, though. Blowing up the image one can see the young woman is smiling with her eyes and her lips and that there is also an amused twinkle in the postman’s eyes. It kind of spoils the story told by the painting of a young woman anxiously expecting news from the young man she is in love with. When it comes to narrative paintings and photographs, it is all in the detail !

Illustration 13. “Village Postman – I guess not this morning, Miss” by an unidentified photographer. Front picture and enlargement of the back label. Author’s collection.

As I said earlier there might be other stereoscopic photographs the source of which can be traced back to Hemlsey’s work and I will definitely keep my eyes open for more connections.

One of the nicest things about this article is that while looking for Hemsley-related cards I came across two other images which I can add to my “collection” of painting inspired staged scenes. They are both by Michael Burr, who undoubtedly holds the record for the number of photographs he made which are based on paintings or illustrations, and they were relatively easy to find as the photographer kept the titles used by the original artists. The first of these stereoscopic photographs – copyrighted on 24 May 1867 – is called “A Village Tyrant” and is after a painting of the same name by George Augustus Holmes (1829 – 1922). In the painting the “Tyrant” is none other than a big and aggressive-looking turkey cock apparently terrorising the children of the village. In the photograph it doesn’t look so terrible but I guess the photographer had to make do with what stuffed bird he could lay his hands on at the difference of the painter who could easily turn any turkey into a bigger and scarier fowl with a few strokes of his brush.

Illustration 14. “A Village Tyrant” by Michael Burr, after a painting by George Augustus Holmes. Author’s collection.

The second Burr photograph is after a watercolour attributed to Scottish artist Margaret Louisa Heriot Maitland (1816 ­– 1905), dated 12 June 1840 and signed with her initials M. L. H. M.

Illustration 15. Margaret Louisa Heriot Maitland, “Is that you Tommy ? for I cannot see; “Yes Granny.” “Bless the child, why don’t your mother cut your hair?”. Getty online archive.

Illustration 16. Michael Burr, “Is that you Tommy ?”, copyrighted on 15 July 1868. Author’s collection.

Burr’s caption is word for word the one written at the top of Margaret Louisa Heriot Maitland’s watercolour and the composition is very similar too, as you can see for yourselves. I don’t know whether the painting was famous in its time but it is obvious Burr knew about it and must have owned a copy of it – or at least had access to one – in order to make such a faithful photographic replica of it.

Until the next time I find a connection between a painting and a stereoscopic card, then !

Denis Pellerin

#StereoscopyDay

Copyright © The Stereoscopy Blog. All rights reserved.

NOTES:

[1] The Poor Man’s Picture Gallery, by Denis Pellerin and Brian May. Published by the London Stereoscopic Company in 2014. Still available in the LSC’s online shop.

[2] English, French and German magazines are the most likely to have inspired European genre stereoscopic photographers but it doesn’t mean one could not find similar pictures in illustrated publications from other countries.

[3] Several of these were published in Stereo World or on Stereoscopy.blog (The Rugged Path, In the Bitter Cold). If we were to publish a “revised” edition of The Poor Man’s Picture Gallery, it would at least be twice as big, which may not prove convenient ! I may, at some point, draw out a list of all the stereoscopic photographs I know of which were directly or indirectly made after paintings. It would probably be a bit dry but would, at least, provide some useful information for future researchers and for the few current collectors who actually care about the stories behind their photographs.

[4] This collection was formerly part of the archive of our dear friend and mentor, professor Roger Taylor. It has proved a gold mine of information over the years and lifting the heavy volumes each time they are needed makes for a very good workout ! The run we are fortunate to have in the archive covers the first 26 years of the ILN, from 1842 to 1867.

[5] The Illustrated London News, 5 March 1853, p. 184.

[6] The battle of Inkerman was fought on 5 November 1854 and that of Balaclava a few days earlier, on 25 October. The Charge of the Light Brigade took part on the latter occasion. In both cases casualties were heavy on each side.

[7] The Illustrated London News, 22 March 1856, p. 312.

• History and Research
• Stereoviews