David Octavius Hill
David Octavius Hill (born May 20, 1802 in Perth , Scotland, † May 17, 1870 in Edinburgh ) was a Scottish painter , lithographer and photographer . Together with his partner Robert Adamson , he is one of the pioneers of photography .
life and work
Hill was born in 1802 in Perth, Scotland, the son of a bookseller. He was married twice, his first marriage to Ann Macdonald in 1837 and a second marriage to the sculptor Amelia Paton in 1862.
His first publication was in 1821 the Sketches of Scenery in Pertshire. He then studied from 1822 with Andrew Wilson in Edinburgh at the School of Design. In 1825 he co-founded the Royal Scottish Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, of which he was secretary from 1830 to 1869.
As a painter, he devoted himself to landscape painting and became a popular artist. Today, however, his paintings are rated as average and mediocre.
In 1840, The Land of Burns was published , which Hill illustrated with 61 steel engravings on the life and work of the Scottish poet Robert Burns .
In 1843 Hill wanted to paint the inaugural meeting of the Scottish Free Church . To this end, he consulted with Sir David Brewster , who suggested that he and the chemist Robert Adamson use the new invention of photography to capture the 470 church representatives. Numerous calotypes were created using the technique of William Henry Fox Talbot , which served as a template for the 152 cm x 345 cm picture, which was only completed in 1866. The picture hangs in the Presbytery Hall of the Free Church of Scotland in Edinburgh
Between 1843 and 1847 he ran a photo studio together with Robert Adamson (1821–1848). Adamson was more responsible for the technical part, while Hill took care of the structure and composition of the motifs. The joint work resulted in between 1500 and 3000 calotypes. The motifs range from portraits of well-known contemporaries, landscapes and street scenes, to scenes from the simple life of Scottish workers.
After Adamson's untimely death, Hill only managed the studio for a few months. He returned to painting and then used photography almost exclusively as a tool for his paintings.
His grave is in the Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh.
The German Photographic Academy (until 1988 Gesellschaft Deutscher Lichtbildner) has awarded the David Octavius Hill Medal since 1955 .
plant
- The First General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland
- Sketches of Scenery in Pertshire - 1821
- One Hundred Calotype Sketches - Edinburgh, 1848.
- The Land Of Burns: A Series Of Landscapes And Portraits. - 2 volumes, Edinburgh, 1840.
Inaugural meeting of the Scottish Free Church, 1843
Fisherwives in St. Andrews
Fisherwives in Newhaven
literature
- Prof. Wilson and Robert Chambers "The Land of Burns" with numerous steel engravings by David Octavius Hill Esq. RSA, Ed. Blackie & Son, Glasgow-London 1840
- Heinrich Schwarz, "David Octavius Hill - The Master of the Camera" Insel Verlag, Leipzig 1931
- Dr. Heinrich L. Nickel "Davis Octavius Hill" Fotokinoverlag, Halle, 1960
- John Ward, Sara Stevenson: Printed Light: Scientific Art of William Henry Fox Talbot and David Octavius Hill with Robert Adamson . Her Majesty's Stationery Office, Edinburgh 1986, ISBN 0-11-493124-0
- Sara Stevenson: The Personal Art of David Octavius Hill . Yale University Press, New Haven 2002, ISBN 0-300-09534-1
- Bodo von Dewitz, Karin Schuller-Procopovici (eds.): Hill & Adamson. From the beginnings of artistic photography in the 19th century . (Exhibition catalog) Steidl, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-88243-749-9
Web links
- Literature by and about David Octavius Hill in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about David Octavius Hill in the German Digital Library
- Search for David Octavius Hill in the SPK digital portal of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
- David Octavius Hill at artfacts.net
- David Octavius Hill at photography-now.com
- Exhibition catalog in Steidl-Verlag
- Gisèle Freund about Hill
Individual evidence
- ^ German Photographic Academy ( Memento from June 24, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hill, David Octavius |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Scottish painter, lithographer and photographer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 20, 1802 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Perth , Scotland |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 17, 1870 |
| Place of death | Edinburgh |