During
his lifetime, William Constable made a total of three visits to
America and it is possible that on his last trip to the States
in 1840, he had the opportunity to study the commercial possibilities
of the recently invented art of photography. Louis Jacques
Mande Daguerre, a French theatrical designer and showman had
perfected the technique of fixing an image on a silver-coated
copper plate in the late 1830s and the process had been announced
to the world in Paris in August 1839. This early form of photograph
was given the name daguerreotype by its inventor. The first
successful American daguerreotype was made in New York in September
1839 . Alexander Wolcott and his business partner John Johnson
opened the world’s first daguerrian portrait studio in New
York at the beginning of March 1840. Given Constable’s intellectual
curiosity and his fascination with scientific processes, it is
likely that he took an early interest in the new art of photography
and while in America he had the opportunity to observe the work
of early American daguerreotypists and see the commercial potential
of producing and selling photographic portraits.
Miss Dorothy Draper,an American daguerreotype
portrait taken by John W Draper in June 1840
It
is therefore possible that when William Constable returned to
Brighton from America in 1841, he already had some knowledge of
the daguerreotype process. However, in the England of 1841 he
was not free to open his own independent photographic portrait
studio. In England, unlike other parts of the world, any person
who wished to establish a daguerreotype portrait studio first
had to acquire patent rights or purchase a licence from Richard
Beard, a prosperous businessman who since 1840 had taken steps
to take control of this new commercial enterprise.
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Richard
Beard and the Daguerreotype Patent in England