[Album of 117 landscape photographs, primarily of the west of Scotland but also a few from England]
[Scotland,
1865?]
This is a substantial album of highly proficient albumen print photographs, dating from the early era of the wet collodion plate process.  The focus of the album is the town of Dunoon on the Cowal peninsula and the Firth of Clyde. It was possibly compiled as a reference work for the eminent English watercolourist Sir Francis Powell (1833-1914), who in 1857 moved to Dunoon and made several paintings of the landscapes of the area and sea views. Powell would later be one of the founders of the Royal Scottish Society of Watercolour Painters, becoming its first President. In 1858 Powell married the daughter of Joseph Lockett, of the Strangeways Engraving Works, Manchester, who also had a residence in the area. Lockett’s house, Sgor Bheann, features three times in the album, as does his yacht “Snake”. This album may represent the fruits of one or more cruises in the area taken by the Lockett and Powell families in the “Snake”.
The identity of the photographer(s) is unknown; however, a Joseph Lockett junior of Dunoon is recorded as one of the early photographers of Scotland, who exhibited at the 1859 exhibition of the Glasgow Photographic Society. Another candidate is the Glasgow photographer Thomas Laing, who had set up a photographic studio in Dunoon in the late 1850s. Laing may have assisted in the creation of the album by giving advice and training for the Lockett and Powell families.