In the mid-1840s, the Scottish painter-photographer team of Hill and Adamson produced the first substantial body of self-consciously artistic work using the newly invented medium of photography. William Henry Fox Talbots patent restrictions on his calotype or Talbotype process did not apply in Scotland, and, in fact, Talbot encouraged its use there. Among the fellow scientists with whom he corresponded and to whom he sent examples of the new art, was the physicist Sir David Brewster, principal of the United Colleges of Saint Salvator and Saint Leonard at Saint Andrews University, just north of Edinburgh. By 1841, Brewster and his colleague John Adamson, curator of the College Museum and professor of chemistry, were experimenting with the calotype process, and the following year they instructed Adamsons younger brother Robert in the techniques of paper photography. By May 1843, Robert Adamson, then just twenty-one years old, was prepared to move to Edinburgh and set up shop as the citys first professional calotypist.
As important as Brewsters introduction of Adamson to the calotype was, another introduction proved even more consequential. Just weeks after Adamson had established himself in Edinburgh, Brewster saw an opportunity to send business his way. On May 18, 1843, the Church of Scotland met in General Assembly amid great dispute over the role of the crown and landowners in appointing ministers. As the Assembly opened, the moderator, Rev. Dr. David Welsh, read an Act of Protest and led 155 ministersmore than one-third of those presentfrom the Assembly and through the streets of Edinburgh to Tanfield Hall, where in the days that followed they signed a Deed of Demission, resigning their positions and livelihoods, and established the Free Church of Scotland. Their act of conscience, at great personal risk and sacrifice, seemed heroic to many who were present, including Sir David Brewster and David Octavius Hill.
Hill was a locally prominent and well-connected painter of romantic landscapes and secretary of the Royal Scottish Academy of Fine Arts in Edinburgh. With the encouragement of the new Free Church, he resolved to paint a large historical painting of the signing of the Deed of Demission and, as was often the case for works of this nature, proposed to finance his painting through the sale of reproductive engravings of the finished work. In his advertisement for the engravings, issued within a week of the Disruption (as the upheaval was called), Hill wrote, The Picture, the execution of which, it is expected will occupy the greater portion of two or three years, is intended to supply an authentic commemoration of this great event in the history of the Church will contain Portraits, from actual sittings, in as far as these can be obtained, of the most venerable fathers, and others of the more eminent and distinguished ministers and elders.
