Bessie Morrissey-Murin

COPYRIGHT, PHOTOGRAPHY & ART: COMMERCIAL AND CULTURAL EFFECTS IN BRITAIN 1862-1878

My dissertation looks at when photography first became a copyrightable medium – and how this intersected with the Victorian art market and the public's appetite for reproductions alongside changing concepts of authorship, originality and property.

In the middle of the 19th century, the booming contemporary art market contributed to calls for copyright protection to be given to all works of fine art (engravings had first been granted protection in 1735 and sculpture/models in 1798). After several years of debate, copyright protection was extended to painting, drawing and photography in 1862 under the Fine Art Copyright Act. Although the inclusion of photography within the act was controversial as photography did not enjoy the same status as so-called 'works of the mind', many photographers took it up enthusiastically.  

My research focuses on the commercial practice of reproducing artworks through photography and registering them under the new copyright legislation. By exploring this body of copyright registrations now held at the National Archives, I intended to shed light on the practice of fine art reproductions made via photography and how it coincided with the law, as this has largely been an area overlooked by historians of photography.

I found that the litigation often associated with photography and the Fine Art Copyright Act in the historiography of copyright was the exception rather than the rule. New technologies transformed how reproductions of artworks were consumed. Those working in older reproductive methods such as engraving had to grapple with the growing market for cheaper copies made by mechanical processes. In the 1860s, this led to a series of legal disputes involving photographs of engravings being reproduced and sold illegally, to the chagrin of publishers in the printing industry who had invested heavily in the production and commission of engravings (often taken from paintings of acclaim). In an attempt to control the market of reproductions, members of this class registered photographs of engravings under the Fine Art Copyright Act as a precautionay measure against potential pirates.

However, compared to the majority of entries depicting photographic reproductions of artworks, photographs of engravings were one of the least registered for copyright protection (in my sample years 1863, 1866, 1869, 1872, 1875 & 1878), whereas paintings were the most photographed medium. The evidence supplied in this dissertation points to a much larger narrative within the history of photography regarding the commercial practice of reproducing artworks beyond what legal historians specialising in copyright law have tended to focus on.

IMAGE: Photograph attached to the copyright registration form for 'Photograph of drawing by Edward Burne Jones. Study of head of female looking over shoulder', 1878. COPY 1/42/187 National Archives, 2022.