Pioneering picture maker who set up in the Black Country
WHEN you think of things the Black Country is famous for, there are many, but photography is rarely near the top of anyone’s list.
In truth, however, it should be, because one of the very earliest pioneers of the new art of ‘painting with light’ in the nineteenth century was based in Wolverhampton, where he had his own studio.
His name was Oscar Gustave Rejlander, born in the Swedish capital Stockholm in 1813, who moved to England to become a portrait panter and miniaturist in the 1830s. He began his artistic career in Lincoln, but was said to have been so impressed by the way the new science of photography captured the creases in a sleeve, that he immediately abandoned his brushes and set about learning the new discipline for himself.
It’s not clear why he decided that the industrial Midlands was the place to do this, but in 1846 he arrived in Wolverhampton, and set up his own studio, where he produced portraits of sitting guests, including some nudes, and put together montages, combined from several separate images, that looked almost like classical paintings. He was said to have used local theatrical groups to pose for his photographs.
His work was so highly rated that he was hired to portray Lewis Carroll, who became a friend, he exhibited at the Paris Exhibition, and the Edinburgh and Birmingham Photographic Societies, and his images were bought by no less a figure than Queen Victoria, for her husband Albert’s collection. The prince himself went on to collect Rejlander’s photographs, including one which showed the Tipton Slasher, William Perry, squaring up to an opponent in a quarry, and remains in the royal collection to this day. He later moved away from photo-montage, and concentrated on social comment, with pictures such as ‘Night in Town’, from 1860, shown at top right.