One Book
Inventory number: 4226
Photographer(s): David Whyte [Whyte & Co., Inverness, Scotland]
Title: Photographs of Works on Highland Railway
Publication date: 1865
Price: $8,500
Description: A large portfolio of 16 mounted albumen photographs on stiff mounts with printed captions and credits. Each image measures 9¾ x 14½ inches (248 x 362 mm.) on a 16½ x 20½ inch mount (419 x 521 mm.). The photographs, credited to Whyte and Co. of Inverness, depict the Highland Railway. Large folio, 21 x 17 inches (534 x 432 mm.). Quarter green morocco with title in gilt; lightly rubbed; photographs loose as issued.
The photographs show railway viaducts and bridges that cross placid rivers or turbulent streams flowing through Scottish towns and countryside. Some are built entirely of sequential stone arches; others are single span constructions of iron and stone. Strategically placed human figures add scale and provide an element of the picturesque to these large, bold, and finely composed photographs. Each photograph is captioned on the mount with the name of the span, its engineer, and its contractor.
This elegant portfolio was assembled to promote the engineering feats of the Highland Railway. Opening on February 1, 1865, the railway was an amalgamation of the Inverness and Aberdeen Junction Railway and the Perth Junction Railway. This combined railway made its headquarters at Inverness and operated north of Perth in central Scotland. Inside the cover is a mounted list of the directors of the railway company.
David Whyte (1841-1905), the self-styled “Leading Photographer of the North,” began in the 1860s to produce standard commissions of family groups, weddings, and babies, as well as a large body of photographs of shop windows and building frontages. After the firm of Whyte and Co. closed in 1985, its vast collection of around 140,000 negatives and prints was deposited in the Highland Regional Councils Museum Services. A worldwide library search for copies of this portfolio only located one in Aberdeen (with 18 photographs) and one at the National Library of Scotland (with 17 photographs).