Photography
The work of photographer Alexander Henderson
The Ice Cone of Montmorency Falls, circa 1870
Context
During the summer of 1940, Thomas Greenshields Henderson finally decided to clean out the basement of his large Westmount home. No more procrastination, he probably told himself. He hired two hired hands who worked tirelessly for an entire day to take out countless heavy and bulky boxes. Thus, his house was finally free of useless junk.
Thomas was the grandson of Alexander Henderson, a famous 19th-century photographer. He had just destroyed a priceless photographic heritage of more than 140,000 large-format glass plate negatives. All that remains of Henderson's work are prints that were collected from collectors by McCord Museum curator Stanley Triggs between 1965 and 1998. In 2012, the museum was able to present a magnificent outdoor exhibition entitled "Inhabited Landscapes" on McGill College Street of Henderson's large-format photographs.
Alexander Henderson (1831—1913) was a well-known 19th-century photographer whose scenes of Canadian landscapes, the city, and outdoor activities attracted the most enthusiastic praise at home and abroad. Canadians and visitors sought them out for information about places visited or daily activities, or simply for the artistry of the images themselves. At least one serious collector in Montreal amassed them avidly for their historical value. Yet for nearly seventy years after Henderson's retirement in the late 1890s, this once-popular, varied body of images was all but forgotten, and his vast collection of negatives was abandoned in the basement of a Montreal home.
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Honorary stamp of Alexander Henderson, issued in 1989
Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909, published in 2009. Photograph of Niagara Falls by Alexander Henderson
Victoria Bridge, Grand Trunk Railway by Alexander Henderson, circa 1878
All information available on the internet relating to Alexander Henderson is based on research by McCord Museum curator Stanley Triggs from 1965 onwards and published in Archivaria, Volume 5, 1977-78
During his early years, Alexander Henderson worked successfully as a seed merchant. He was born in Scotland in 1831 to a prosperous family. He married Agnes Elder Robertson in Edinburgh, and they had nine children.
In 1849, he began a three-year apprenticeship to become a bookkeeper. Although he never liked the prospect of a business career, he entered it to please his family. With his wife, Henderson immigrated to Lower Canada in October 1855. They settled in Montreal, where, from 1859 to 1863, Henderson worked as a commission merchant.
The transition to photography
Henderson accumulated his knowledge of photography in Montreal around 1857 and soon concentrated on producing images as a serious amateur. His artistic progress and mastery of techniques were rapid, and in 1865, he published his first major collection of landscape photographs. Limited in circulation (only seven copies have been identified), the publication was titled "Canadian Views and Studies by an Amateur" on the cover and "Photographic Views and Studies of Canadian Landscapes" on the title page.
This first document was a publication with a limited edition, produced individually for each buyer, which would explain the variations among the five remaining copies. This publication is significant because it is the first set of photographs from which we can assess Henderson's work. The quality of his work is not that of an inexperienced beginner, but rather that of a talented and serious amateur. Each print reveals exceptional technical and artistic skill. This publication is an important personal milestone that may have motivated him to devote his life to the art of photography on a professional basis.
From amateur to professional
In 1866, perhaps encouraged by the reception of his book, he abandoned his business activities as an accountant to open a photography studio located at 10 Phillip Square and presented himself as a portrait and landscape photographer. From around 1870 , he gradually abandoned portraiture to specialize in landscape photography. His many photographs of city life were captured in the context of street scenes, buildings, and markets animated by human activity.
Ice castle at Place d'Armes, opposite Notre-Dame church, circa 1887
Portraiture became a minor part of his professional activity, as very few portraits appear in his collections. He undoubtedly employed staff to support his studio activities and possibly hired an assistant for his fieldwork. Nevertheless, judging by the consistency of style in the photographs attributed to him during this period, it seems likely that he took all the pictures himself.
In 1874, he moved to 237 St. James Street East, this time calling himself a landscape photographer. Two years later, he moved to his final address at 387 Notre Dame West.
Although his preferred subject was landscapes, he often composed his scenes around human activities. There was a sufficient market for these types of scenes, such as the illustration of soil cultivation, river canoe handling, woodcutting or ice cutting, the use of steamboats, railroads, and waterfalls, to allow an experienced and skilled photographer to earn a living.
Cutting ice cubes on the St. Lawrence River, in the Montreal region (in the background, the Victoria Bridge, inaugurated in 1860), circa 1870.
His best years
By the late 1860s, there were few skilled photographers due to the cost and complexity of equipment and time-consuming production techniques. Consequently, a photographic souvenir of a trip, a record of a beloved scene, or an image as a gift was frequently purchased from a professional photographer. Henderson exhibited reference photographs for mounting, framing, or inclusion in an album. He also published two small books of Montreal scenes, one showing the city in summer, the other in winter.
In 1869, the nieces of John Molson , a prominent Montreal businessman, commissioned Henderson to prepare an elaborate album containing several hundred prints for their uncle's birthday. He thus published in 1870 a stereographic album entitled “ Photographs of Montreal.” It was a simple format, containing a title page and a table of contents, followed by twenty photographs, one photo per page. The only known copy is held by the Public Archives of Canada. The title page refers to “a similar book of winter scenes also published,” of which no copy has yet been found.
Henderson traveled extensively throughout Quebec and Ontario, documenting the major cities and resort areas of both provinces and several villages in Quebec. He particularly enjoyed the wilderness and made many trips in a birchbark canoe to the Blanche, Rouge, Lièvre, and other eastern rivers. He visited the Maritimes several times. In 1872, he sailed the north shore of the St. Lawrence River with John Thomas Molson and his family on Molson's yacht , the Nooya. That same year, while in the lower St. Lawrence region, he took photographs of the construction of the Intercolonial Railway.
Stylistically, Henderson's work was in keeping with the documentary tradition prevalent in the 19th century. Photography was still a new art. The camera's remarkable ability to present minute details matched the demands of the time, when realism was the dominant trend in both landscape and portrait photography. Nevertheless, within this realistic approach, Henderson employs characteristic light, texture, and meticulous composition, going far beyond the average contemporary landscape photographer.
His attention to people engaged in various activities makes his photographs invaluable for the social historian and the interpreter of architecture. His images are not only usefully factual; they are more like portraits, thus bringing the bricks and stones to life.
Ice cream seller, Victoria Square, circa 1869
In the late 1870s and early 1880s, some of his works reflected a more personal style. What had previously been a tendency toward Romanticism sometimes became a complete abandonment of realistic representation in favor of a direct emotional response to the scene he was confronted with. For archivists and social historians, these images are not always important as historical documents, but they are certainly significant scenes, reflecting his interest in artistic inspiration.
Example of the personal style typical of Henderson's photographs from 1880 onwards
His years with the railway companies
His interest in railway infrastructure during his personal travels led to his securing a contract with the CP Railway Company in 1875. The objective was to document the major structures along the nearly completed line from Montreal to Halifax.
A few years later, William Notman established a partnership in 1884, lasting nearly 25 years, with the general manager of the Canadian Pacific, William Van Horne; the Canadian Pacific would accommodate Notman by letting him travel on the train for free, so that he could photograph all along the railway route, in exchange for which, the company would have access to Notman's photographs for its promotional campaigns.
The two photographers had a friendship and it seems that they worked in partnership in the realization of the CP projects.
Henderson received further contracts for other railway companies. In 1876, he photographed bridges on the Quebec, Montreal, and Ottawa Railways and for the Occidental Railway between Montreal and Ottawa.
From 1882 to 1884, he photographed bridges built by the Dominion Bridge Company Limited for the Canadian Pacific Railway. In 1885, he traveled west with the CPR to Rogers Pass, British Columbia, where he described the mountain scenery and the progress of construction of the new railway line in the Rockies.
Intercontinental Railway Bridge, Sackville, New Brunswick, taken by Henderson in 1875
In 1892, Henderson accepted a full-time position at the CPR as director of the photography department, which he had established and administered. His responsibilities also included spending four months in the field each year. The summer of his junior year, he made his second trip west, photographing along the railway to Victoria. He held this position until 1897, when he retired from photography altogether.
A friend of William Notman
Henderson was a personal friend and colleague of William Notman. Their children were about the same age and played together, as Henderson photographed some of them sliding outdoors near his studio. During his amateur years, he often purchased his photographic supplies from Notman. The two men made a photographic excursion to Niagara Falls in 1860 and collaborated on experiments using magnesium torches as an artificial light source in 1865.
They belonged to the same societies and were among the founding members of the Art Association of Montreal. The first meeting was held in Notman's studio on January 11, 1860, with Henderson presiding. Later, they both joined the Young Men's Christian Association and participated in the Montreal Amateur Photographic Club.
Despite their friendship, their landscape styles and viewpoints were very different. Although Notman's scenes are known for their bold realism, often tending towards the abstract, Henderson produced romantic pastoral images for his first twenty years, illustrating the strong influence of the British landscape tradition .
Henderson frequently exhibits his photographs in Montreal and abroad, in London, Edinburgh, Dublin, Paris, New York and Philadelphia; he has often received special mentions.
Chronological comparison of the lives of Henderson and William Notman
Photographic choices
For his outdoor work, Henderson used a variety of negative sizes: five by eight inches, six and a quarter by eight and a quarter, eight by ten, eleven by fourteen, and stereographic. He may also have worked in other formats, such as four by five and five by seven inches. There is not enough dating of his photographs to indicate when he began using the different formats, but it is likely that the 11 by 14 inch format was not used until the 1870s. The earliest photograph of this format in the Notman Photographic Archive is from 1875.
Artistic recognition
His greatest success came in 1877 and 1878 in New York when he won first prizes at the exhibition organized by E. and H.T. Anthony and Company for landscapes using the Lambertype carbon process. In 1878, he won second prize (a silver medal) at the Paris World's Fair.
Retirement
Henderson retired from professional photography in the late 1890s. No photographs have been identified as his after this period, indicating that he left his work altogether. Although there is a large volume of letters from this period of retirement, photography is mentioned only once, when his son, an engineer in Africa, asked him to visit Notman to produce a better portrait since the one he had sent him was of poor quality. After that, nothing. It is as if Henderson had never been a photographer. His family certainly forgot about him, and there is not even a mention of his photographic activities in the obituaries written upon his death in 1913. His grandson, many years later, refers to him as an amateur photographer.
Loss of the collection
When Alexander Henderson died in 1913, his immense collection of glass negatives was stored in the basement of his Westmount home. After the death of his unmarried daughter, some 40 years later, his grandson Thomas Greenshields Henderson , the only surviving descendant of the family, spent a full day carrying boxes of negatives (glass plates) to the garbage for the garbage collectors.
The only known negatives of Alexander Henderson are the eight perfectly preserved five-by-eight-inch wet-plate negatives that are part of the Henderson Collection in the Notman Photographic Archives. These were commissioned by David Ross McCord , founder of the McCord Museum, and are part of the McCord home and grounds, “ Temple Grove ,” located on Côte des Neiges Road. He apparently purchased both the prints and negatives, which are now part of his extensive Canadiana collection, duly recorded in the accession booklets.
David Ross McCord's grand mansion, known as “Temple Grove”
David Ross McCord's grand mansion, known as “Temple Grove”
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The loss of Alexander Henderson's thousands of photographic plates is a cultural tragedy of significant proportions for Montreal and Canadian heritage. These plates, much more than mere works of art, were visual testimonies of a bygone era, capturing the landscapes, urban scenes, and daily life of the 19th century. Their destruction represents a rupture with a precious collective memory.
At a time when photography served as a bridge between history and art, Henderson's works stood out for their technical quality and narrative depth. Each lost plate is a closed window on the past, depriving future generations of a richer understanding of the evolution of Montreal and Canada.
This tragedy also raises questions about heritage preservation, highlighting the fragility of historical archives. The lack of adequate preservation and the shortcomings in early recognition of their value illustrate the urgent need to protect the works of pioneering artists and photographers to avoid a repeat of such a loss.
Henderson's work is known today through several collections of prints, the largest of which is held at the National Archives of Canada in Ottawa and the Notman Photographic Archives of the McCord Museum of Canadian History in Montreal.
The 2012 McGill College Exhibition
The exhibition Inhabited Landscapes , by photographer Alexander Henderson, allowed visitors to admire 25 giant-sized photographs depicting magnificent 19th-century Canadian landscapes.
Presented on McGill College Avenue, between De Maisonneuve and Président-Kennedy streets, this outdoor exhibition illustrated astonishing views of the Montreal of yesteryear. Pedestrians could observe the charms of the Quebec winter in Mount Royal Park in 1877, see the ice cutting on the St. Lawrence River at the same time, or fly over one of the most beautiful private gardens in the city, that of the Séminaire de Montréal. Several other scenes captured in the great outdoors were also presented.
References
Stanley G. Triggs, Researcher and Archivist
He met Judge Miller Hyde, a longtime friend of Thomas Greenshields Henderson, the deceased grandson. Judge Hyde was the executor of the estate and agreed to donate a collection of Henderson family material to the McCord Museum Archives.
Only eight glass plates remain from the Henderson collection. A modest 1973 exhibition at the McCord Museum, at a time when Henderson's work had not yet been collected.
In 1956, Stanley Triggs began studying fine arts and anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Shortly after completing his studies, he was hired by the Notman Archives in Montreal. He began working as curator of the McCord Museum in December 1965 and retired 28 years later.
L'Actualité, 2012, the art of landscape according to Alexander Henderson
Dictionary of Canadian Biography
McCord Museum, Alexander Henderson Exhibition , 2022
The exhibition "Alexander Henderson — Art and Nature" was held at the McCord Museum in Montreal from June 10, 2022 to April 16, 2023. This major exhibition presented more than 250 works by photographer Alexander Henderson, offering an in-depth perspective on his contributions to landscape photography in Canada.
Live Opening — Art and Nature Exhibition
YouTube, Presentation of the exhibition at the McCord Museum by Hélène Samson, Curator
Wikipedia Commons , Alexander Henderson
Photo collection