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Frederick William Flower (22 February 1815 – 18 July 1889) was a Scottish-Portuguese photographer. He is considered one of the pioneers of photography in
Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of the ...
. Most of his photographs from between 1849 and 1859 have been well-preserved.


History

Frederick Flower was born on 22 February 1815 in
Leith Leith (; gd, Lìte) is a port area in the north of the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, founded at the mouth of the Water of Leith. In 2021, it was ranked by '' Time Out'' as one of the top five neighbourhoods to live in the world. The earliest ...
,
Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...
, where his father had been sent to work. At an early age his parents moved back to England, living in Hull. It was from there that he sailed to
Porto Porto or Oporto () is the second-largest city in Portugal, the capital of the Porto District, and one of the Iberian Peninsula's major urban areas. Porto city proper, which is the entire municipality of Porto, is small compared to its metropol ...
in 1834, where he took up a position with the Port wine exporters, Smith Woodhouse & Company. He stayed at the home of the owner of the company, Robert Woodhouse, as was customary for young Englishmen moving to Portugal to work in the wine trade. Following the death of his father, he was joined in Portugal in 1836 by his mother, brother and two younger sisters. It is not known exactly when Flower took up photography or from where he obtained the necessary expertise. He was one of the first people in Portugal to use the salted paper and
calotype Calotype or talbotype is an early photographic process introduced in 1841 by William Henry Fox Talbot, using paper coated with silver iodide. Paper texture effects in calotype photography limit the ability of this early process to record low ...
processes developed by
Henry Fox Talbot William Henry Fox Talbot FRS FRSE FRAS (; 11 February 180017 September 1877) was an English scientist, inventor, and photography pioneer who invented the salted paper and calotype processes, precursors to photographic processes of the late ...
in England from the late 1830s. He may have learned of the calotype process from Joseph James Forrester, famous for mapping the
Douro The Douro (, , ; es, Duero ; la, Durius) is the highest-flow river of the Iberian Peninsula. It rises near Duruelo de la Sierra in Soria Province, central Spain, meanders south briefly then flows generally west through the north-west part o ...
river, who took up amateur photography around 1853, although information was first made available in the Revista Literária published in Porto. Flower made most of his calotypes between 1853 and 1858. He was also the Portuguese pioneer of the use of strip photography. Flower is likely to have obtained his photographic supplies from British suppliers and received instructions along with those supplies. Flower prepared his own
photographic emulsion Photographic emulsion is a light-sensitive colloid used in film-based photography. Most commonly, in silver-gelatin photography, it consists of silver halide crystals dispersed in gelatin. The emulsion is usually coated onto a substrate of glas ...
and was known to sometimes touch up the negatives to create an artificial cloud effect. His photographs were usually taken in Porto and in
Vila Nova de Gaia Vila Nova de Gaia (; cel-x-proto, Cale), or simply Gaia, is a city and a municipality in Porto District in Norte Region, Portugal. It is located south of the city of Porto on the other side of the Douro River. The city proper had a population o ...
on the opposite bank of the Douro, where the port companies were based. However, he also travelled widely in northern Portugal. His photographs provide an important record of aspects of everyday life in Portugal at that time.


Preservation and exhibition of photographs

Flower briefly returned to England in 1874 for health reasons but he and his wife returned to Porto later, where he died on 18 July 1889. For more than a century, Flower's direct descendants ensured the conservation of his photographs before donating them to the National Photography Archive of the General-Directorate of Cultural Heritage of Portugal. In 1928, his grandson, Harold M. Flower, commissioned new prints obtained from the calotypes and toured the north of Portugal to try to identify the places photographed by his grandfather. The family had carefully preserved the photographs, also collecting historical memories about its author. Although the Flower family remained an Anglo-Portuguese family, they never transferred the photographs to England. Whenever a member of the family returned to England, he or she deposited the collection with another family member who remained in Portugal. The calotype negatives have mainly survived in good condition, but some of the prints have not. Because his photographs were retained by the family, Flower had been relatively unknown in Portugal, apart from through one or two magazine articles. This changed after the State acquired his photographs and an exhibition was held at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in
Lisbon Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Grande Lisboa, Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administr ...
in 1994. The total collection consists of 216 calotypes and 101 proofs on salted paper (together with later proofs). This allowed the photographs to be appraised not just for their historical record but also for their artistic style, as noted by André Rouillé in the Exhibition Catalogue. An examination of the collection shows strong evidence of Flower's technical skills and mastery of photographic techniques as well as deliberate attempts to experiment.


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Flower, Frederick William 19th-century photographers Pioneers of photography Photographers from Edinburgh Portuguese photographers 1815 births 1889 deaths British emigrants to Portugal People from Leith