Alice Hughes
British photographer (1857–1939)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alice Mary Hughes (31 August 1857 – 4 April 1939) was a British portrait photographer and businesswoman specializing in images of royalty, fashionable women and children.[1]
Alice Hughes | |
|---|---|
Illustration of Alice Hughes, unknown artist | |
| Born | 31 August 1857 London, England |
| Died | 4 April 1939 (aged 81) Worthing, England |
| Family | Edward Hughes (father) |
Biography
Alice Hughes was the eldest daughter of the portrait painter Edward Hughes (1832–1908). After studying photography at the London Polytechnic she opened a studio in 1891 next to her father's in Gower Street, London, which she operated until December 1910.[2] In her day, she was a leading photographer of royalty, fashionable women and children, producing elegant platinotype prints. During her most successful periods, she employed up to 60 women and took up to 15 sittings a day.[3] In 1914, for a short period before the First World War, she ran a business in Berlin but returned to London at the beginning of the war, opening a studio in Ebury Street in 1915.[3][4] The Ebury Street studio was not as successful as her first business and she closed it in 1933, retiring to Worthing where she died after a fall in her bedroom in 1939.[5]
From 1898 to 1909, she contributed several hundred portraits to Country Life. In 1910, she sold 50,000 negatives to Speaight Ltd.[5]
Assessment
A pioneer of portrait photography, Hughes developed a distinctive style "by fusing the conventions of society portraiture with the cool, monochromatic tones of the platinum print." (From Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.)[3]
Gallery
Queen Mary (1905)
Lady Jellicoe (1917)
Pauline Astor (1904)
Alexandra of Denmark (1902)
.jpg)
