Frederick Hollyer: working methods

Photography and painting

'The very soul of the picture'
Hollyer's reproductions were sold as luxury prints, often in signed sets acknowledging both the artist and the photographer. They were advertised in exhibition catalogues and books, with the information that his studio was open daily and a free illustrated catalogue could be obtained by sending Hollyer 19 stamps.

These reproductions provided a source of income for Hollyer, but also popularised the work of leading contemporary artists. People who could not afford original paintings could buy photographic reproductions instead. Framed and displayed alongside tasteful objets d'art, Hollyer's images became an essential part of late Victorian interior decoration.

They included drawings and paintings by Edward Burne-Jones, Lord Leighton, G.F. Watts and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as well as the Holbein drawings at Windsor Castle. The Burne-Jones reproductions were particularly successful and viewers found it difficult to distinguish between the original and the photograph. An article in The Studio claimed,

'Only the rare millionaire could gather them in sufficient numbers to make possible a detailed study of the methods and convictions of this inimitable craftsman. But the photographs from the originals are not by any means inaccessible.' (1898, page 49)

Hollyer photographed many works by Simeon Solomon, including the illustration to the Song of Solomon entitled And he will watch over me - His Pavilion over me was love. His portraits of Solomon, taken in 1866 and then 30 years later in 1896, testify to their long working relationship.

Hollyer's hall of fame

In choosing to paint distinguished residents and visitors to London, Hollyer may have been influenced by the 'Hall of Fame' portraits that G.F. Watts took of his most eminent contemporaries. There is some overlap in their sitters, notably in the artist Walter Crane.

Another style of portraiture that recurs in Hollyer's albums is an evocative depiction of society ladies, their faces turned away from the camera. These too may be an echo of Watts's painted portraits.

Hollyer photographed Watts himself four times, at two different sittings. In the later ones, Watts wears a black skull cap.

Art in the press

In photographing the artists that were linked to the Royal Academy, Aestheticism and the Arts and Crafts Movement, Hollyer both defined and documented the artistic elite. These photographs appeared in the press, in books and also in the home.

His albums indicate the increasing professionalism of the Victorian art world and map its overlapping networks, which included artists, writers, critics, actors, journalists, historians and social thinkers. Among Hollyer's sitters were two important critics associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood - F.G. Stephens, who wrote for The Athenaeum for 40 years, and John Ruskin. As well, there were two influential art editors of the period: M.H. Spielmann, of the Magazine of Art, and Gleeson White of the new Studio. White was a strong proponent of the Arts and Crafts. Museum curators also appeared notably A.K. Coomaraswamy, a scholar of Indian art who later moved to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and Dugald MacColl, who later became director of the Tate Gallery in London.