This is one of four calotypes of young girls with David Octavius Hill?s dog, a terrier pup called Brownie. The girls depicted are Sophia Finlay ? Hill?s great-niece ? and Harriet Farnie, the younger of two sisters. Sleeping children were a recurring theme in nineteenth-century art, as it played on the Victorian fascination with childhood innocence and death. The image is clear and well-defined, which means that the girls must have sat very still for anything from several seconds up to a minute. Presumably the dog had been played with until it collapsed in exhaustion. Hill later called this picture `The Sleepers? and added `Brownie, my stolen and lamented terrier pup?.
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821 - 1848)
Robert Adamson was one of the first professional photographers, setting up in business in Edinburgh in March 1843. He had aspired to be an engineer but his health was too poor. His brother, John, who was involved in the early experiments with photography in St Andrews, taught him the calotype process. Shortly after opening his studio on Calton Hill, Robert met the painter David Octavius Hill. They worked together for a few weeks on studies for a grand painting of the Free Church of Scotland before entering into partnership to explore the possibilities of photography. Despite Adamson's early death, the two produced some of the most impressive works taken in the medium and greatly influenced later practice in the art.
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802 - 1870)
A painter and a lithographer by training, David Octavius Hill is best remembered for the beauty of the calotypes he and Robert Adamson produced together. Hill was a sociable and kind-hearted man who did much to support the arts in Scotland and between 1830 and 1836 he was the unpaid Secretary of the newly established Royal Scottish Academy. After Adamson's death, Hill's attempt to start a new partnership with the photographer Alexander MacGlashan around 1860 failed. Hill is to this day revered as one of the first in the trade who transformed photography into an art form.
