About this artwork

This calotype is an example of a composition that is inspired by tableaux vivant. Designed to illustrate a narrative either from fiction or from artworks, they were a popular entertainment in the nineteenth century. Adamson and Hill created a series of images depicting the monks of Kennaquhair from the Walter Scott novel ‘The Abbot’, which are among the first photographs to utilise such staging. The model in this image is the landscape painter William Leighton Leitch, Queen Victoria’s drawing master and a teacher of landscape painting. The use of photography to recreate a historic scene or create an entirely fictional one remains an influence on contemporary photography of performance.

Updated before 2020

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David Octavius Hill

David Octavius Hill