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An engineer in India, Stewart joined the Photographic Society of Bengal in 1862, clearly already experienced in photography. In the 1856 Photographic Society of Scotland exhibition in Edinburgh, Lady Baillie contributed two of his calotypes, Bungalow, with Cotton Trees and River Boat of the Ganges, under repair. Stewart was also an inventor and showed a panoramic camera of his design to the Bengal society. In its 1864 exhibition Stewart was praised as a mechanical engineer but chastised as one who “works smugly and scarcely does himself justice.”
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
Executive Engineer, Calcutta and Jessore Road.
Joined Bengal Photographic Society Jan 1862.[1] His panoramic camera was shown to members of the Photographic Society of Bengal at the meeting of 26 January 1863.[2]
Some of his photographs were also shown at the society’s 1864 exhibition:
‘S.A. Stewart, Esq., deserves much credit for his panoramic views as a mechanical engineer and inventor, if not as a photographer. Of these pictures we like No. 715 best. Mr Stewart works smudgily and scarcely does himself justice. No. 718, despite its failure as a photograph, is an effective dirty picture; the breaks of light, howsoever these may have been accomplished, produce a result which would be natural if it were less smudgy, the artist should remember that cleanliness in photography, as in morals stands next to goodness and is essential to it.[3]
Footnotes
- Λ Journal of the Bengal Photographic Society, vol. 1, no. 1, 1 May 1862.
- Λ See Journal of the Bengal Photographic Society, vol. I, no. 3, 30 December 1862, illustration facing p. 76, and vol. II, no. 4, pp. 1-4.
- Λ Journal of the Bengal Photographic Society, vol. II, no. 7, March 1864, p. 83.
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