Scottish photographers in nineteenth-century Italy

Abstract

Abstract No account of the photographic activities that linked Scotland with Italy in the nineteenth century can proceed without acknowledging the dominant achievement of Robert Macpherson (1811–1872). As an artist who had already taken up pemtanent residence in Rome at least a decade before he abandoned painting in favour of photography in 1851, he takes natural precedence over the many other Scottish photographers of the same period who set out for Italy in search of subject matter. The body of work he made in the 1850s and 1860s was not only exemplary in its scope and quality, it was also the product of a professional practice, pursued in a fiercely competitive commercial context. As such, it achieved a degree of thoroughness in its response to contemporary tastes that no visiting amateur could have hoped to emulate. Macpherson's reputed affability and the apparent ease with which he formed attachments to the leading international artists and intellectuals who congregated in Rome confirm the unique cen...