John Jabez Edwin Mayall

For the English blues musician, see John Mayall.

Self-portrait of Mayall (daguerreotype, c. 1844)

John Jabez Edwin Paisley Mayall (17 September 1813 near Oldham, Lancashire – 6 March 1901 in Southwick, West Sussex) was an English photographer who in 1860 took the first carte-de-visite photographs of Queen Victoria. He is most well known for his 1875 portrait of Karl Marx.

Born into a Baptist family on 17 September 1813, at Chamber Hall, near Oldham in the county of Lancashire, his birth name was registered as Jabez Meal. He was the son of John and Elizabeth Meal.

North America

In 1846 the partnership between Van Loan and Mayall came to an end. John Mayall then established his own Daguerreotype studio at Fifth and Chestnut Street.

High art photography

Gernsheim describes Mayall as "the earliest exponent of fine art photography" on the basis of his production of ten daguerreotype in 1845 to illustrate The Lord's Prayer and his later his large (61cm x 38 cm) "daguerreotype pictures to illustrate poetry and sentiment" shown at the Great Exhibition; The Soldier's Dream, The Venerable Bede blessing a child, and 'Bacchus and Ariadne' Prince Albert's encouragement however did not dissuade Mayall from ceasing his pursuit of photography as art, discouraged but the judgement of The Athenaeum: "To us these pictures seem a mistake. At best, we can only hope to get a mere naturalistic rendering. Ideality is unattainable--and imagination supplanted by the presence of fact."

Mayall and J. M. W. Turner

Mayall arrived in London from America in 1846, and by August 1848 had placed advertisements describing himself as "Mr. Mayall of Philadelphia, United States." Mayall called his studio/gallery the "American Daguerreotype Institution".

Scenes of Mayall taking Turner's daguerreotype, alone and together with his companion Mrs. Booth, appear in the film Mr. Turner.

Portraits of eminent people

Queen Victoria, 1860

Portrait of Karl Marx (1875)

In May 1860, he made a number of portraits of the Royal Family. Mayall was given permission to publish the portraits of the Royal Family as a set of cartes-de-visite. In August 1860, the cartes were released in the form of a Royal Album, consisting of 14 small portraits of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their children. The Royal Album was an immediate success, and hundreds of thousands were sold as Britons began collecting carte de visite portraits of famous people, a fad which Gernsheim credits to the popularity of Mayall's royal portraits.

Another series of royal portraits by Mayall was published in 1861 and when Prince Albert succumbed to typhoid fever in December 1861, his death created an enormous demand for his portrait. The Photographic News later reported that within one week of his death "no less than 70,000 of his carte de visite were ordered from Marion & Co." By the end of the decade, Marion & Co, had paid Mayall £35,000 for his portraits of the Royal Family which established the carte de visite (cdv) as his most popular portrait format, of which the Mayall establishment produced over half a million cartes a year, which helped him secure an annual income of £12,000.

Brighton

He left his eldest son Edwin to run his London studios and moved down to Brighton with his wife and two younger sons. On 18 July 1864, he opened his new photographic portrait studio at 90-91 Kings Road, close to the recently built Grand Hotel. In an announcement placed in the pages of the Brighton Examiner, he stated that he had "spared neither pains nor expertise in preparing, for the accommodation of the nobility and gentry resident at or visiting Brighton, one of the most efficient studios ever built." Although he addressed his comments particularly to the "nobility and gentry", Mayall admitted that he was "not unmindful of the fact . . . that moderate charges are as necessary as general excellence to ensure extensive public patronage." Mayall charged £1.1s for a set of 12 carte de visite portraits and £5.5s for his "highly finished" coloured portrait photographs.

In 1869 his son, John Junior, became the first person to cycle from London to Brighton. According to the Bournemouth Echo (2 May 1903): "John Mayall, Junior, was the first cyclist, or velocipedist as the term then was, to traverse the Brighton road. On 17th February, 1869, he rode a 'boneshaker' from Trafalgar-square to Brighton in about 12 hours."

Mayall's wife Eliza died in Brighton in 1870. The following year, on 14 December 1871 at St George's Bloomsbury, he married Celia Victoria Hooper (1838-1922), widow of timber merchant Henry Morgan Hooper and daughter of surgeon William Gardner. This marriage produced three further children: Elsie Lena (born 1872), Oswald (born 1874) and Sibyl (born 1876).

Mayall the innovator

As a daguerreotype artist, Mayall considered himself to be a pioneer and inventor, He introduced new techniques and novelties into the art of photography.

Death

Mayall died, aged 88, on 6 March 1901 at Southwick, West Sussex. He was buried on 19 March 1901 at Lancing, West Sussex.

Publications

• Mayall J. E. 1867. Mayall's Celebrities of the London Stage : A Series of Photographic Portraits in Character. London: Messrs. A. Marion Son.
• Mayall, J.E.; Pound (Engraver), Daniel J. (1859). The drawing-room portrait gallery of eminent personages : principally from photographs by Mayall in Her Majesty's private collection, and from the studios of the most celebrated photographers in the Kingdom. London: The London Joint Stock Newspaper Co. OCLC 1250378270.
• Tennyson, Alfred; Mayall, J.E.; Stodart, George J. (1884). The works of Alfred Tennyson poet laureate. London: Macmillan and Co. OCLC 5318210.
• Roffe, William; Crew, John J.; Mayall, J. E.; Collins, Joseph; Watkins, John; Bonnar, W.; Horsburgh, J.; Uwins, Thomas; Rolls, Charles (1875). Gibbon, Charles (ed.). The casquet of literature : being a selection in poetry and prose from the works of the most admired authors. London, Melbourne: Blackie & Son. OCLC 499988817.

External links

• Media related to John Jabez Edwin Mayall at Wikimedia Commons