ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL AND THE LAUNCHING CHAINS OF THE GREAT EASTERN
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ROBERT HOWLETT
Genre Portrait, industrial, documentary
Date 1857
Location London, UK
Format Glass plate
“Robert Howlett (1831-58) was a pioneer of early photography He rose to prominence while working for the Photographic Institute on New Bond Street, London, working on commission on portraits and other assignments. Among his published works is On the Various Methods of Printing Photographic Pictures Upon Paper: With Suggestions for their Preservation (1856), and he was commissioned by Queen Victoria to photograph Buckingham Palace.
Today, his work is displayed by galleries including the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Howlett was commissioned by The Illustrated Times to cover the construction of the world’s hitherto largest steamship, the SS Great Eastern.
The photographs were later transferred into engravings for the magazine. In this, one of his best-known images, he shot a portrait of the ship’s creator and engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, in front of launching chain near the construction in Millwall shipyard. The unusual backdrop, so different from the usual indoor studio sittings of the time, is through to be one of the first examples of environmental portraiture. The picture is beautifully composed, with Brunel standing in a casual manner, his hands jammed into his pockets and a cigar dangling from his mouth, his gaze away from the camera. Our interest in the image today is partly anthropological, as a relic of past costumes and customs, but Howlett also gives the viewer a keen sense of Brunel’s character. He stands unbothered by the smudges of paint on his clothes or the creases of his suit, and his pose is natural and unaffected before the camera.”(AZ)
‘[Howlett] died less than a year after this picture was taken, poisoned, it was suggested, by his own photographic chemicals.’
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National Portrait Gallery, London
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