Robert Howlett - Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1857)

Photographer: Robert Howlett

Robert Howlett was a pioneering British photographer who is best known for his iconic picture of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The image was part of a commission by The Times to document the construction of the world’s largest steamship, the SS Great Eastern.

After inheriting £1000 from his Grandfather, he moved to London, and rose to prominence working for the Photographic Institution, where he undertook a number of commissions for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. These commissions included copying the works of Raphael for Prince Albert, and making a series of portraits of heroic soldiers from the Crimean War; the latter of which were exhibited in 1857 at the Photographic Society of London’s annual exhibition.

Other commissions included making photographic studies of the crowd at the 1856 Epsom Derby for painter William Powell Frith who used them in his 1858 painting The Derby Day.

Howlett died in 1858, aged 27. His death was probably a result of over-exposure to the arsenic and mercury used in the photographic process.

Work: Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1857)

The image is an environmental portrait, as opposed to the usual studio setting. Howlett’s camera produced negatives using the wet-plate collodion process, which necessitated a range of portable darkroom equipment. Brunel is pictured in front of the giant chains of the braking mechanism of his latest project; the Great Eastern, a gigantic ocean-going iron steamship. The entire picture is one of strength; Brunel standing tall and confident with his stovepipe hat and cigar, with the mighty and enormous chains as a backdrop. His shoes and trousers are mud-spattered, suggesting a hands-on approach to his projects. It is as if the photograph is trying to give us a physical experience of the man. A painting of Brunel from the same year by John Callcott Horsley shows the designer at his desk, representing the intellectual; a conventional representation of the intellectual that could have been painted any time since the mid-18^th century. In Howlett’s image, Brunel is freed from this tradition, and displays his power to us directly, as he displayed it to the men in his shipyard.

This confident image of Brunel gives no clues to the problems that would later plague him. Shortly after this picture was taken, he tried to launch the Great Eastern, but it was stuck in its dry moorings. Several attempts later the ship was waterborne, but on the eve of its first sailing Brunel suffered a stroke. The ship was also plagued by further problems, and was relegated to being a cable-laying vessel, rather than the promised passenger ship.    

References

Wikipedia. (2016). Robert Howlett. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Howlett [Accessed 14 Jun. 2016].   

Jones, J. (2000). Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Robert Howlett (1857). [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2000/jun/17/art [Accessed 14 Jun. 2016].

Clark, D. (2011). Isambard Kingdom Brunel by Robert Howlett - Iconic Photograph - Amateur Photographer. [online] Amateur Photographer. Available at: http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/iconic-images/isambard-kingdom-brunel-by-robert-howlett-iconic-photograph-15974 [Accessed 14 Jun. 2016].