The attribution ‘Unknown Photographer’ is like catnip to the photohistorian.
Sometimes the pieces of the jigsaw fall neatly into place and a credible name for the author of an image emerges.
That’s exactly what happened during the writing of this blogpost.
It began with a portrait photograph that is more than 160 years old and among the earliest protected by UK copyright law.
It features the veteran statesman and philosopher Henry, Lord Brougham (1778-1868) and was taken by Daniel Downey, one of the Tyneside brothers behind the celebrated photography firm of W. & D. Downey.
These facts are known because of a vital piece of legislation that early photographers in particular were quick to embrace.
On 29th July 1862, the Fine Arts Copyright Act became law and required anyone wanting to protect their paintings, drawings or photographs to complete a form and attach a copy of the work.
The first photograph (COPY 1/1/1) was registered on 15th August at Stationers Hall in London where the act was administered.
A few months later, according to a document stored in the National Archives at Kew, Daniel Downey submitted a form together with a copy of the photograph (seen above) that he had taken.
Dated 19th November 1862, the resulting form complete with his signature is numbered ‘279.’
For a researcher like me with an ongoing interest in charting the history of the Downey company, seeing such a document in the flesh as I did recently was a real privilege.
As regular readers will be aware, 1862 was a pivotal year for the Downey brothers, William and Daniel, who had started their photography business in South Shields several years earlier.
That January, their photographs of the aftermath of the New Hartley pit disaster claiming the lives of 204 men and boys were acclaimed by Queen Victoria.
Then, in March, their new studio at 9 Eldon Square, Newcastle on Tyne opened and quickly became a go-to destination for the great and good seeking a high-quality photographic portrait.
Daniel’s portrait of Lord Brougham was subsequently issued commercially as a carte de visite.
An example of this carte marked ‘Copyright’ and ‘W. & D. Downey’ on the front is part of the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London.
As to when the photograph was taken, an article in the Newcastle Daily Journal (12th January 1863) reported how Downey had been honoured with repeated commissions from Brougham, who it called “the great opponent of the slave trade.”
The paper went on: “… only recently they were on a professional visit to his residence in Westmoreland, when they had the rare good fortune to obtain, in one small carte de visite, the portraits of both Lord Brougham and Mr. Gladstone.”
Searching online for this carte featuring Brougham with the then Chancellor of the Exchequer and later Prime Minister in four British governments, I came across this image.
Titled ‘Henry Brougham …. and William Ewart Gladstone’ and described as an ‘albumen print, late 1850s,’ the website of the National Portrait Gallery, London states that it was purchased in 1991 and attributes it to an ‘unknown photographer.’
Looking at the chair being used and the stone wall background, the visual evidence suggests a number of similarities with Daniel Downey’s copyrighted portrait of Lord Brougham.
Press reports also help identify a possible date and location at which these portraits featuring Brougham alone and together with Gladstone were taken.
In a report headlined ‘Mr. Gladstone’s visit to Newcastle’, the Newcastle Courant (10th October 1862) described how “the right honourable gentleman [Gladstone] and Mrs. Gladstone, who had been staying with Lord Brougham at Brougham Hall, near Penrith … arrived at Blaydon-on-Tyne, on Monday afternoon, by train from Carlisle.”
From British Newspaper Archive.
This account points to the period prior to this when the sittings took place with Brougham Hall being a strong candidate as the location.
It would also connect neatly with an event that took place in Newcastle the day after Gladstone and Mrs. Gladstone’s arrival in the city on Monday 7th October 1862.
The next day, the Newcastle Courant reported that Gladstone paid a visit to “the studio of Mr. Downey, photographer, Eldon Square, where the Chancellor of the Exchequer sat for a portrait.”
This resulting carte de visite issued by W. & D. Downey is part of my collection and also features in several versions in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Taken together, the sequence of events strongly suggests that Daniel Downey not only took the portraits featuring Lord Brougham and Mr. Gladstone at Brougham Hall, but also as that of Gladstone at Downey’s Eldon Square studio in Newcastle.
Whatever the exact details of their provenance, the resulting photographs capture two of Britain’s best-known politicians in their Victorian pomp.
Pressphotoman 
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