After his death, the firm was managed with continued success and acclaim by his sons, William McFarlane and Charles F. Notman. The characteristic stamp of his style and technique is eminently visible on these images taken in 1850's or by his studio nearly a century later. The traces of our Canadian past take on an extraordinary irrefutable and documentary validity, a different order of realism to what had been known before. These photographs reveal scenes of times when Canada was born, showing actual First Nation's peoples and actual places, at an actual historical moment. To be a photographer in the nineteenth century was, in a way, to be midwife to our modernity.
Modern history starts with the invention of the camera.
His enthusiasm was for largely how new developments could influence studio technique. He was a superior practitioner of both the art and the science of photography, as well as an imaginative businessman who turned his work into a lucrative vocation. It was no other art nor science that secured his future, but rather engineering. The coming of the railway transformed North American cities, and changed the life and prospects of William Notman. He had had a solid, classical education, with extensive training in drawing and painting, and he had toyed with the idea of becoming a professional artist.