H. P. Robinson

Henry Peach Robinson (9 July 1830 – 21 February 1901) was an English pictorialist photographer best known for his pioneering combination printing, an early example of photomontage. He engaged in contemporary debates in the photographic press and associations about the legitimacy of 'art photography' and in particular the combining of separate images into one.

Life

Robinson was born in Ludlow, Shropshire the oldest of four children of John Robinson, a Ludlow schoolmaster, and his wife Eliza. He was educated at Horatio Russell's academy in Ludlow until he was thirteen. He left the academy to take up a year's drawing tuition with Richard Penwarne before being apprenticed to bookseller and printer, Richard Jones.

While continuing to study art, his initial career was in bookselling. In 1850 he worked for Bromsgrove bookseller Benjamin Maund, then in 1851 for the London-based Whittaker & Co. In 1852 he exhibited an oil painting, On the Teme Near Ludlow, at the Royal Academy. This year also marked the beginning of his photographic work. Five years later, following a meeting with the photographer Hugh Welch Diamond, he decided to devote himself to that medium. He opened his first studio in 1855 in Leamington Spa to sell portraits.

In 1856, with Oscar Rejlander, he was a founding member of the Birmingham Photographic Society.

In 1859, he married Selina Grieves, daughter of a Ludlow chemist, John Edward Grieves. His son, Ralph Winwood Robinson, was also a photographer.

In 1864, at the age of 34, Robinson was forced to give up his studio due to ill-health from exposure to toxic photographic chemicals. Photography historian Gernsheim has shown that thereafter Robinson preferred the easier 'scissors and paste-pot' method of making his combination prints, rather than the more exacting darkroom method employed by Rejlander.