Getty Museum

[James Nasmyth]

Date

1843–1847

Medium

Salted paper print from a paper negative

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

> The most common associational object used by Hill and Adamson (David Octavius Hill [1802-70] and Robert Adamson [1821-48]) to convey information pertaining to a sitter's background was a book. While such miscellaneous items as a human skull and a birdcage appear in some of the pictures (see [84.XO.734.4.2.10](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/99256/hill-adamson-professor-spence-1844/) and [84. XM.445.6](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/39606/hill-adamson-miss-ellen-and-miss-agnes-milne-1843-1847/)), a book was included in many calotypes to indicate that the subject was an educated person. Held by the sitter, a book also functioned as a device to keep hands from fidgeting, while open pages often reflected light, illuminating facial features (see [84.XM.445.15](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/39615/hill-adamson-sir-david-brewster-1843-1844/)). In this portrait of the inventor James Nasmyth (1808-90), the large, weighty tome is suggestive of the man's intellectual abilities, while the calipers subtly refer to his training as an engineer. > > Hill had studied under Nasmyth's father, the noted landscape painter Alexander Nasmyth (1758-1840). In his autobiography James described Hill as "all in all, a most agreeable friend and companion." Hill combined a "lively sense of humour, . . .a romantic and poetic constitution of mind, and his fine sense of the beautiful in Nature." > > Anne M. Lyden. *Hill and Adamson*, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1999), 32. ©1999, J. Paul Getty Museum.

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