St Andrews, Cradle of Scottish Photography: Brewster, the Adamsons and Thomas Rodger

established claims rest on the Brewster–Talbot correspondence, the photographs and albums in St Andrews University Library and the National Museums of Scotland, exhibition catalogues and reviews, and A. D. Morrison-Low's research. shared claims involve interpretation. traditional claims come from obituaries and later reminiscences.

The weak points are these. No daguerreotypes made in St Andrews are known to survive. Rodger's 1883 obituary and an 1897 article credited him, as a boy, with a leading role in experiments in the early 1840s, which is unlikely given that he was then under ten; Morrison-Low dates his work for Lord Kinnaird at Rossie Priory to around 1849–52. Sources disagree on Rodger's dates: most give 1832–1883, but one catalogue gives 1833–1888. Adamson's and Rodger's portraits are hard to tell apart.

Brewster's circle

established St Andrews was a small, quiet town in the 1840s, but it had a scientist of international standing. Brewster had corresponded with Talbot since the 1820s, and the new penny post let news of Talbot's work reach Fife quickly. Brewster obtained details of the calotype process, which made paper negatives from which many prints could be taken, and his circle set to work. Dr John Adamson, a local physician described by Brewster as "a good Chemist, and successful with the Daguerreotype", mastered the calotype after months of trial and error, around the spring of 1842.

established John taught his younger brother Robert. In 1843, in the aftermath of the Disruption of the Church of Scotland, Brewster introduced Robert to the painter David Octavius Hill, who wanted portraits of hundreds of ministers for a commemorative painting. On 3 July 1843 Brewster told Talbot that Hill was "in the act of entering into partnership with Mr Adamson". The Hill and Adamson partnership in Edinburgh produced some of the most celebrated photographs of the century.

The amateur doctor

shared John Adamson stayed in St Andrews. After Robert's death in 1848 he considered taking his brother's place with Hill, his obituarist recorded, but a growing medical practice kept him at home. He remained an amateur, combining photography with medicine, sanitary reform, temperance campaigning and service as a town councillor. In 1861 he asked the Photographic Society of Scotland to hang his large portrait heads prominently, hoping to turn public taste away from the fashionable small carte-de-visite photographs, in which he thought "the photographic art has been progressing backwards".

established His portraits of visitors were prized. In 1867 he photographed the novelist Charles Kingsley, and in 1870 the historian J. A. Froude, who sat nine times in twenty minutes before Adamson, with one plate left, caught him off guard and made what a friend called "quite the best likeness of him I have ever seen". Dr John Brown wrote that Adamson's portrait of the surgeon James Syme gave "the fullest idea of his nature". Yet when Adamson died in 1870, not a single photographic journal seems to have published an obituary.

Thomas Rodger, the professional

established Thomas Rodger was the son of a house painter. He was apprenticed to a chemist at fourteen and worked as Adamson's assistant in the University chemistry classroom, preparing experiments. He briefly studied medicine at the Andersonian in Glasgow, but Adamson persuaded him to make photography his profession. His later advertisements gave his business as "established 1849". Morrison-Low suggests that Adamson, having lost his brother, encouraged Rodger as a successor, and may have passed on some of Robert's equipment.

established Rodger specialised in portraits and won medals at Aberdeen in 1853 and Edinburgh in 1854. Reviewers of the Photographic Society of Scotland's exhibitions in the late 1850s placed him at the head of Scottish portraitists, one calling him the "Homer" of photography. His sitters included David Livingstone, Sir David Brewster and the young Marquess of Bute. As commercial taste changed, he produced cartes-de-visite and souvenir albums for the tourists who arrived by railway after 1852, and a branch studio operated in Edinburgh for a few years from 1879. His son joined the business and was equally admired.

shared Rodger in turn trained other photographers, including the Hungarian émigré Ivan Szabo, so that the St Andrews line ran through much of Scottish photography in the nineteenth century.

• When photography reached St Andrews, Thomas Rodger, later its first professional photographer, was not yet ten years old.
• J. A. Froude sat for John Adamson nine times in twenty minutes; only the last plate, taken when he had given up, produced a likeness his friends admired.
• An amateur in 1861 complained that the fashion for small carte-de-visite portraits meant photography was "progressing backwards".
• A boy's grandmother once dragged him out of Adamson's photograph of St Andrews Castle just as the lens was uncapped, and her bonnet and veil blotted out part of the castle.

• Myth: the boy Thomas Rodger took a leading part in the St Andrews experiments of the early 1840s. Rodger's 1883 obituary and an 1897 article say so, but it is unlikely, as he was then under ten. A. D. Morrison-Low dates his work for Lord Kinnaird at Rossie Priory to around 1849–52.
• Disputed: when the first Scottish calotypes were made. John Adamson mastered the process around the spring of 1842. The date is approximate.
• Disputed: Thomas Rodger's dates. Most sources give 1832–1883, but one catalogue gives 1833–1888.
• Disputed: who took some of the portraits. Adamson's and Rodger's portraits are hard to tell apart, so some attributions may be wrong.
• Disputed: early daguerreotypes at St Andrews. Brewster described Adamson as successful with the daguerreotype, but no daguerreotypes made in St Andrews are known to survive.