| Names: | Other: Captain R.B. Hill
Other: Captain Richard Barton Hill
Other: R.B. Hill
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| | Dates: | 1835 - ? | | Active: | India |
Active in Calcutta in the 1850s.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York acquired an excellent collection of his albumen silver prints when they acquired the Gilman Collection in 2005.Preparing biographies
The son of a Gloucestershire surgeon, Hill studied classics and mathematics and became a cadet in the Bengal Army in 1853. Very little is at present known about his photographic work, but it included at least one paper negative, a View from Himalayas, that probably represents a larger body of work. In the 1864 exhibition of the Photographic Society of Bengal, his efforts were noticed: “Capt. R. B. Hill has some good Barrackpore sketches. No. 744, a pretty view in the station, is a pretty good picture, well taken; the perspective is excellent, but the photograph is not well vignetted, and an inch on each side with half an inch from top and bottom might have been cut off with advantage; it would then form a sweet little picture.”
Roger Taylor & Larry J. Schaaf Impressed by Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840-1860 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2007)
This biography is courtesy and copyright of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is included here with permission.
Date last updated: 4 Nov 2012.
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John Falconer, British Library
A Biographical Dictionary of 19th Century Photographers in South and South-East Asia |
Amateur, India
Son of A Gloucestershire surgeon, studied classics and mathematics and entered Bengal Army as a cadet 1835.
Showed prints at the 1864 exhibition of the Bengal Photographic Society: ‘Capt. R.B. Hill has some good Barrackpore sketches. No. 744, a pretty view in the station, is a pretty good picture, well taken; the perspective is excellent, but the photograph is not well vignetted, and an inch on each side with half an inch from top and bottom might have been cut off with advantage; it would then form a sweet little picture.’[1]
MMA/Gilman collection has album Photographs taken in India which contains View from Himalayas, albumen print from a calotype negative, credited to him.
Footnotes
- Λ Journal of the Bengal Photographic Society, vol. II, no. 7, March 1864, p. 83.
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