Details of Sculptor

Surname

Archer

Alternative Surname

First Name

Frederick Scott

Initial of Surname

A

Year of Birth/Baptism

1813

Flourished

Year of Death

1857

Biographical Details

Though a trained and practising sculptor, Archer is best remembered as the inventor of the wet collodion process, which greatly reduced the exposure time necessary to take a photograph. He was the second son of a butcher from Bishop’s Stortford and was apprenticed to Mr Massey, a silversmith of Leadenhall Street, London. In 1836 he entered the Royal Academy Schools on the recommendation of Edward Hawkins, giving his address as Hamilton Place, King’s Cross. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy that year (23).
By 1842 he had moved to 18 Tavistock Street and in January 1844 he married Frances Garratt Machin of Bexley, Kent. The same year he exhibited a statue of Alfred the Great at Westminster Hall (2). The work was ill-received by the Literary Gazette which considered that ‘to fulfil our idea of Alfred the figure should be grand and powerful, but Mr Archer seems to think that a tame, spiritless specimen of vulgarity will do’ (Lit Gaz, 1435, 20 July 1844, 466). In 1850 Archer carved the monument to Lady Henrietta Maria Conyngham, which was illustrated in the Gentleman’s Magazine. It has an urn in low relief and is decorated with a band of ‘XP’ monograms, placed alternately in crowns of thorns and laurel wreaths (1). He also exhibited busts of distinguished sitters at the Royal Academy.
He died on 2 May 1857 and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery. A subscription list was opened by the Photographic Society to help his indigent family and over £700 was raised. His widow died the following year, so the money supported his children. They were also granted a pension of £50 by the Crown, on the grounds that their father’s photographic discoveries had been of no benefit to him, though they had been extremely profitable to others.
Literary References: AJ 1857, 230; Graves I, 1905-6, 57; Gunnis 1968, 19; Heyert 1979; Bertram 1985; Dommasch 1989, 334-6; Ray 1989, 28-9
Archival References: RA admissions; IGI