William Notman

William Notman and his sons William Mcf., Charles, and George. Taken in his studio in 1890. William Notman (8 March 1826 – 25 November 1891) was a Scottish-Canadian photographer and businessman. The Notman House in Montreal was his home from 1876 until his death in 1891, and it has since been named after him. Notman was the first photographer in Canada to achieve international recognition.

Biography

Notman was born in Paisley, Scotland, in 1826. He received a decent education, which included lessons in painting and drawing. He moved to Montreal in the summer of 1856. An amateur photographer, he quickly established a flourishing professional photography studio on Bleury Street, a location close to Montreal's central commercial district, where he attracted clients who were members of the political and business elite.

His first important commission was the documentation of the construction of the Victoria Bridge across the St. Lawrence River. The studio also provided training for aspiring photographers and painters.

Notman was highly regarded by his colleagues for his innovative photography, and held patents for some of the techniques he developed to recreate winter within the studio walls. He could simulate the presence of ice and snow in the studio, replicate fire using magnesium flares, and create naturalistic photographs using an innovative composite technique. He won medals at exhibitions in Montreal, London, Paris, and Australia. Notman's celebrity was also bolstered by his portraits of famous subjects such as one of Sitting Bull (Sioux name Tatanka Iyotake) and Buffalo Bill (born William Frederick Cody).

When William Notman died suddenly in November 1891 after a short bout of pneumonia, management of the studio Wm Notman & Son was left to his son William McFarlane Notman, an experienced photographer in his own right, who with his brothers, had accompanied the itinerant settlement known as "End of Track" for the Canadian Pacific Railway and documented the completion of the railway in Western Canada.

Legacy At Notman's death, his eldest son and partner, William McFarlane Notman, inherited the company. When William McFarlane Notman died of cancer in 1913, his younger brother Charles assumed responsibility. In 1935, Charles retired and sold the studio to the Associated Screen News,

The Notman Photographic Archives was created with the addition of the McCord Museum's existing photographic holdings to the Notman Collection, and the Notman Collection served as the kernel for an extensive Canadian photography department, covering Canada from Newfoundland to Victoria, the Great Lakes to the Arctic, from 1841 to 1935.

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