Downey's Victorian Portraits

This new exhibition was first shown at Newcastle Arts Centre during February 2005
A selection from this show is combined with 'London Shadows' to form our October 2006 exhibition.

William Downey who was know as the 'Queen's Photographer' was born in King Street
South Shields in 1829. ( ten years before the invention of photography )
About 1855 he set up the town's first photographic studio with his brothers Daniel
and James in a wooden building adjoining the old parsonage.
Branches were later opened in Blyth, Morpeth and Newcastle.

Their first Royal Order was for photographs of the Hartley Colliery Disaster in
January 1862 for Queen Victoria.

Soon after William and Daniel moved to London and established a studio at 5 Eaton Street.
Their first Royal Photograph was of the Princess of Wales ( later Queen Alexandra) taken
at York Agricultural show about 1865. He was shortly after commanded to Abergeldie
to photograph the Prince, and subsequently to Balmoral to make the first of many pictures
of Queen Victoria. ( 'The Borough of South Shields', George Hodgson 1903 p.476)

In the summer of 1863 they set up a glass studio in the Houses of Parliament
where they made portraits of MP's including Lord Palmiston and Gladstone
during afternoon sittings on Wednesdays.

William Downey received a Royal Warrant in 1879.

During 1890-4 Cassel and Co. published 'The Cabinet Portrait Gallery ' a five volume series
of photographs by W & D Downey. This exhibition is largely made from digitally enhanced copies
of a selection of the Woodburytypes from the first two of those volumes.
These pictures were of a technical and artistic quality that made William Downey the most sought
after Portrait Photographer in England, and 115 years later his work remains as one of the most
complete records of how famous Victorians viewed themselves.

Sarah Bernhardt Actress, sculptor and painter Had a series of 'triumphant voyages around the world. She is as well known in London, New York, and Rio Janeiro as she is in Paris.............. Yet with all her eccentricities and shortcomings , it must not be forgotten that she possesses enormous talent, and hardly falls short of being a woman of genius.'	Princess of Wales ' 'It is a common remark that she looks the elder sister rather than the mother of her children. Yet she is in her forty-sixth year, and she has celibrated her silver wedding aniversary. Her father is Christian IX ., King of Denmark , and she is sister to the King of Greece and the Empress of Russia.	Osca Wilde 'Dorian Gray was a revelation to many who did not know Mr. Wilde's varied capacity, and who will be equally astonished to learn that he is a successful dramatist, his strange blank-verse tragedy Guido Ferranti having having had a most prosperous run in America, where Mr.Wilde is more generally appreciated than in Britain.'

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