George Washington Wilson (1823-1893) is remembered today as a pioneering Scottish photographer and successful businessman who was among the first photographers to operate a mass-market commercial photographic printing firm.

Wilson apprenticed as a carpenter at the age of 12 in Aberdeen before moving to Edinburgh in 1846 to study painting. In 1849 he moved to London to train as a portrait miniaturist with the painter, illustrator, and sculptor Edward Henry Corbould (1815-1905) and, after some years of mediocre success, returned to Aberdeen in 1852 to set up a portrait photography studio with the photographer John Hay. In 1854-55 Wilson obtained a contract to photograph the construction of the Royal Family’s holiday residence, Balmoral Castle, and subsequently in 1860 became one of Scotland’s premier photographers for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert as the appointed official Photographer to Her Majesty in Scotland.

Increasingly moving away from portraiture to landscape photography during the 1860’s, Wilson made pioneering contributions that advanced photographic techniques outside of the portrait studio. Among these innovations, he is remembered for his refinement of the stereoscope process and “instantaneous photography” that enabled one to simultaneously produce a sky and landscape in a single negative. Regularly submitting his work to journals and exhibiting his work at photography exhibitions throughout the United Kingdom, Wilson won his first medal at the 1862 International Exhibition in London for “the beauty of his small pictures of clouds, shipping, waves, etc., from nature” and by 1891, had won 27 prize medals at exhibitions around the world. These awards, combined with his keen sense for business and insistence on quality, propelled Wilson to great wealth and fame during his lifetime.

Wilson received international recognition for his carefully composed urban and rural tourist views of Great Britain that were offered in a variety of sizes and formats, including the popular stereograph, to attract a broad market. In 1864 alone, Wilson’s business sold over half a million prints. Taking advantage of the rising interest in the natural landscape during the Victorian era, in 1865 Wilson began a publication series, Photographs of English and Scottish Scenery (1865-68) that was comprised of eleven bound volumes containing twelve albumen prints each with accompanying descriptive text. To keep up with demand, Wilson employed a large staff of photographers and assistants and in the 1880s G.W. Wilson and Co. became the world’s largest photographic printing firm. His sons took over the business upon Wilson’s retirement in 1888 but sold off the entire company by 1908.

In addition to six works already in TMA’s collection, today Wilson’s work can be found in the collections of the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Tate Britain, London; National Portrait Gallery, London; Museum of New Zealand, Wellington; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; and Minneapolis Institute of Art, among many others.