Footnotes

• An unattributed portrait of the celebrated Scottish missionary, in the style associated with Hill and Adamson.
  
  Alexander Duff (1806-1878), was sent out to Calcutta by the Church of Scotland, arriving in 1830. Over the next four years with the help of Raja Rammohan Roy, the Bengali intellectual, he established a school that grew into the General Assembly Institution. Returning to Scotland in 1834 for health reasons, Duff agitated for more support to Indian missions, and advocated education for women, culminating in India and Indian Missions published in 1840 (the full title of the volume in the image). Duff returned to India once more in 1840. When the Disruption of the Church of Scotland occurred in 1843, Duff and all the other Church of Scotland missionaries in India joined the Free Church, forfeiting all that had been established, to start again. He returned to Scotland in 1849, where his reputation was such that in 1851 he was elected Moderator of the Free Church. Hill and Adamson did not commmence their work until 1843, and this stopped with the death of Adamson in 1848. Unless Hill, against all the evidence, took this portrait after the death of Adamson, the photographer remains unknown, although a not dissimilar image in the National Gallery of Scotland is attributed to the Edinburgh photographer James Good Tunny.

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Category: Books / Books, Maps and Manuscripts

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