John Jabez Edwin Mayall
John Jabez Edwin Mayall (born September 17, 1813 in Oldham , Lancashire as Jabez Meal , † March 6, 1901 in Southwick , West Sussex ) was a British photographer and local politician .
Mayall was one of the most successful British professional photographers of the 19th century. His recordings of the royal family and other public figures were particularly popular. He was one of the first to successfully market photos of celebrities.
Life
Early years and first successes as a photographer
Mayall was born to chemical manufacturer John Meal and his wife Elizabeth, and was christened Jabez Meal. There is next to no reliable information about his early years, except that he married in 1834. Allegedly he followed in his father's footsteps professionally. However, a census list from 1841 indicates linen weaver as his profession.
In late 1841 or early 1842 he left England with his family and settled in Philadelphia after a stay in New York . He probably took the surname Mayall at this point. It is not certain whether, as he himself later claimed, he had already become acquainted with the daguerreotype process in England or did not become familiar with it until he was in Philadelphia. In any case, he quickly established himself in the USA as a representative of the still very young craft of photography . He partnered with Samuel Van Loan, another Englishman, and the two ran a joint photography studio . They received an award from the Franklin Institute in 1844 for their photographic production.
In 1845 Mayall became the sole owner of the photo studio. The following year, however, he sold it to Marcus Aurelius Root (1808–1888, who would become one of the most successful American daguerreotypists) and went back to England. This may have been caused by legal difficulties that had arisen from Mayall's practice of hand-coloring daguerreotypes.
The height of his work until 1863
Mayall now settled in London . At first he worked for Antoine Claudet (1797–1867), another pioneer of the daguerreotype, but from 1847 he ran his own studio on the beach and called himself "Professor Highschool". From 1848 he used the name American Daguerreotype Institution for his studio. Mayall was generally mistaken for an American, which may have fueled his success, as American technology was considered superior. Soon he was one of the most recognized photographers in London.
Mayall achieved his professional breakthrough in 1851 when 72 of his daguerreotypes were exhibited at the Great Exhibition , many of them from his time in the United States. It received an Honorable Mention from the Jurors and attracted the attention of Prince Albert , Queen Victoria's husband , who was a promoter of photography. Mayall also photographed the exhibition himself, including the Crystal Palace . In 1855, Prince Albert invited the photographer for the first time to take a picture of the Queen and members of her family. Also in 1855, Mayall advised the British Army and trained two soldiers to document the Crimean War . His growing professional success was already evident in 1853 when he opened a second studio on Regent Street .
Now known as John Edwin Mayall, the photographer was involved in the Photographic Society of London, founded in 1853, and gave several lectures at their meetings. In May 1860, Mayall was again allowed to photograph the royal family. The fourteen photos of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their children were released as a Royal Album in August of that year and proved to be a spectacular success. At the wedding of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII , with Alexandra of Denmark in March 1863, Mayall acted as the official photographer and had a glass house built in Windsor Castle for this purpose . The resulting reputation earned him further commissions from outstanding personalities, including William Ewart Gladstone and Lord Palmerston .
Later years in Brighton
In addition to his three London studios, Mayall opened a studio in Brighton in 1863 . In 1864 he moved to the seaside resort himself and left the London business to his eldest son Edwin (1835–1872). He managed the studio in Brighton himself, but from 1865 he was increasingly helped by another son, John Mayall junior (1842-1891). Over the years, the family business has operated no fewer than ten studios in London, four in Brighton, one in Kingston upon Thames and three in Melbourne, Australia . The exact authorship of many photos that were published under Mayall's name during this time, such as well-known photos by Albert Heim and John Ruskin , can no longer be determined.
In 1864 Mayall was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institution and in 1871 a Fellow of the Chemical Society . Also in 1871 he began a local political career in Brighton, in the course of which he was first a councilor, from 1874 alderman and from 1877 from 1878 mayor . In 1875 he sat on the board of the Photographic Society of London.
John Jabez Edwin Mayall died on March 6, 1901 at the age of 87. The last photo studio of the family business he founded closed its doors in 1941.
Private
Mayall was married twice. His marriage to Eliza Parkin (1816-1870) in 1834 resulted in three sons and a daughter. A year after the death of his first wife, Mayall married the widow Celia Victoria Hooper, who was more than twenty years his junior and with whom he had two other daughters and one son.
Importance of his work
While he was living in Philadelphia, Mayall produced a series of ten photographs between 1843 and 1844 that allegorically translated the Lord's Prayer , a hitherto little known way of using the new medium. In a brochure in 1848 Mayall advertised that he had photographed "some of the most beautiful and talented women in Philadelphia" for her and placed her in the context of his own efforts to elevate photography to an art form. Unfortunately the pictures have not survived. In the following photo series Mayall illustrated scenes from Macbeth and Hamlet as well as Thomas Campbell's poem "The Soldier's Dream".
Mayall was always interested in the technical development of photography and also made his own contributions. Shortly after his arrival in Philadelphia, he made contact with Hans Martin Boyé and Paul Beck Goddard , two chemists from the University of Pennsylvania who were working on perfecting the daguerreotype process. After his return to England Mayall refrained from coloring his daguerreotypes because he feared that the colors could trigger chemical processes with the photographic materials and thereby shorten the life of the photos. Like many photographers of the time, he switched from the daguerreotype to the collodion wet plate technique in the 1850s . After the death of its inventor Frederick Scott Archer , he initiated a support fund for his widow in photography circles and donated the largest single amount himself. He had several of his own inventions patented, including a process known as Ivorytypie in 1855 , with which photos could be printed on artificial ivory . Once colored, these photos resembled ivory miniatures but could be made for a fraction of the cost. Another of Mayall's inventions was a type of screen , the star-shaped cut of which meant that the resulting photos had characteristics of drawings.
Mayall claimed to have been the first to successfully enlarge daguerreotypes using the collodion technique . In later years he remained committed to improving enlargement techniques so that he could eventually produce life-size prints of his photos. In 1880, Mayall's studio on Bond Street was one of the first photography studios to use electric light.
In contrast to most of the gentleman photographers who shaped the Photographic Society of London, Mayall was very interested in the commercial possibilities of the new medium, particularly with regard to the marketing of business card portraits of well-known personalities. Together with publisher DJ Pound, he published The Illustrated News of the World and National Portrait Gallery of Eminent Personages between 1858 and 1863, a series of engravings based on his own photographs and one of the first attempts to capitalize on photos of celebrities . With his Royal Album from 1860, photos of the royal family were made available to a wider public for the first time. His photo series Mayall's Celebrities of the London Stage (1867–68) was also very popular. Before a new copyright law was passed in 1862, Mayell provided prints of such celebrity photos with his initials and the date of the print in order to curb the widespread reprints.
literature
- Budd J. LaRue: John Mayall Jr., WH Dallinger. Nineteenth century microscope collectors and critical microscopists . In: Microscopy. The journal of the Quekett Microscopical Club . Vol. 36, 1992, pt. 9 (Autumn), pp. 675-691.
- Peter Mönnikes: Remembering someone who has been forgotten. Reflections on the London photographer John Mayall . In: Worker Photography . 16th year 1989, issue 63, pp. 46-47.
- John Plunkett: Mayall, John Jabez Edwin (1813-1901). In: John Hannavy (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography. Taylor and Francis Group, New York 2008, ISBN 0-41597-235-3 , pp. 907-909.
- Léonie L. Reynolds, Arthur Gill: The Mayall story . In: History of Photography . Vol 9. 1985, pp. 89-107.
- Larry J. Schaaf: Mayall, John Jabez Edwin (1813-1901). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004. http://aleph-www.ub.fu-berlin.de:2152/view/article/52054 (accessed January 20, 2012).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ In the original: "some of the most beautiful and talented ladies of Philadelphia". Quoted from: John Plunkett: Mayall, John Jabez Edwin (1813–1901). In: John Hannavy (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography. Taylor and Francis Group, New York 2008, ISBN 0-41597-235-3 , pp. 907-909, here p. 907.
- ↑ Ivory type. Description on the Art Gallery of South Australia website . Undated. Accessed January 19, 2012.
- ↑ Commissioner of the Patents (Ed.): Abridgements of Specifications Relating to Photography. Patent Office, London 1861, pp. 20-21.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mayall, John Jabez Edwin |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Jabez Meal |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British photographer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 17, 1813 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Oldham , Lancashire |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 6, 1901 |
| Place of death | Southwick (West Sussex) |