Photograph (Salted Paper Print) of Six Young Scottish Clergymen, by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, c.1845

Calotype (salted paper print from a calotype negative) group portrait of six young Scottish clergymen, sometimes called 'Professor Campbell Fraser's Class'; the subjects (left to right) are Alexander Campbell Fraser, James Walker, Robert Taylor, John G. Murray, John Nelson, and William Welsh. The philosopher Alexander Campbell Fraser (1819-1914) is the seated figure left; he was professor at the Free Church of Scotland's theological college in Edinburgh from 1846, and later at Edinburgh University. The photograph however was probably taken before 1846, as all the young clergymen shown in it were involved in the 'Disruption', the formation of the free Church of Scotland, in May 1843, and the photograph is one of those taken for use as sketches for D. O. Hill's Disruption Painting (completed in 1866). This is an unusually large specimen of the print [that in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery is stated to be 224 x 299 mm], contact copied from the paper negative and left untrimmed, so that the edges of the negative are visible.

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