The career of celebrated Tyneside photographer Matthew Auty (1850-1895) has been chronicled in a number of earlier Pressphotoman posts.
Auty & Ruddock blogpost – 23rd September 2024
Gateshead Glories blogpost – 22nd September 2025
His reputation as a landscape and portrait photographer was sufficiently solid for the business he established in the coastal resort of Tynemouth to thrive well into the 20th century.
However, new research has revealed that the Auty name lived on in a separate photographic enterprise following his sudden death in 1895.
The new business was the result of a liaison between Matthew Auty’s widow Elizabeth and her late husband’s manager Robert Archibald Heaven (1860-1916).
From 1897, newspaper advertisements reveal ‘Auty & Heaven’ operating from an Edinburgh address and looking to employ staff in a variety of posts.
However, details of the exact nature of the couple’s relationship were at the heart of a subsequent legal dispute involving the late Mr. Auty’s will.
In June 1899, the Court of Session in Edinburgh heard that following her husband’s death, Elizabeth Auty had forged a “close relationship” with Mr. Heaven and subsequently gave birth to a child.
Whilst Mr Auty’s will had made financial provision for his widow, its terms were affected by any subsequent marriage she made and this led to a widely reported court case.
The resulting legal dispute took nearly a year to resolve by which point Elizabeth Auty and Robert Archibald Heaven had gone through a marriage ceremony.
As a result, newspapers in both Edinburgh and Newcastle upon Tyne reported that a financial settlement had been reached by the couple with other members of the Auty family.
Photographically, the partnership of Auty & Heaven apparently flourished in the years that followed.
The quality of its portraiture is evident in these examples of the same ‘unknown woman’ from the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland
The firm’s portraits of leading actors and actresses of the day were also supplied to popular illustrated publications such as The Tatler.
By February 1908 though, the business appears to have run its course and an advertisement appeared in the Edinburgh Evening News offering for rent “commodious premises as occupied by Auty & Heaven, photographers.”
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