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The Man and the Studio
Stanley G. Triggs
Major commissions
Some of the outdoor work, however, such as views of private homes, commercial buildings, livestock, carriages and yachts, was done on commission. Again names from the Art Association crop up among the customers for these commissioned works, such as General William Fenwick Williams, who in 1858 was posted as commander of the British forces in British North America. Notman took a series of views of the General's estate on Dorval Island, friends grouped on the croquet grounds, his yacht and the boatmen. During the next several years Notman made many portraits of the General and his officers. The Honourable Lucius Seth Huntington, another member, had his copper mine in the Eastern Townships photographed and had regular portraits of his family taken as well.
The Allan brothers, Montreal shipping magnates, were frequent customers of Notman. One especially fine series of portraits was taken in the conservatory of Andrew Allan's mansion at the top of Peel Street. His brother Hugh, whose family also sat for portraits at Notman's, owned Ravenscrag, a magnificent mansion on the slopes of Mount Royal above McGill University. Notman successfully portrayed the dramatic lines of the Italianate stone structure and the restrained opulence of the interiors. Impressive also are the photographs of the large estate at the top of Redpath Street which surrounded the residence of George Hague, general manager of the Merchant's Bank.
One extensive series of photographs on the lumber and timber trade was probably a commissioned work. The nickname for Ottawa, the centre of Canada's lumber trade, was "Lumber City", and it was well-named - the sight, sound and smell of sawn wood were apparent at every turn. The lumber trade had first come to the area long before any other settlement had begun. In 1800 Philemon Wright, a lumberman from Woburn, Massachusetts, brought a group of pioneers to settle near the Chaudière Falls on the north side of the Ottawa River. Wright's early activities in the lumber and timber trades - using water power from the falls to drive his mill and later rafting timbers down to Quebec City - soon attracted to the area other lumbermen eager to exploit the resources of the vast forests.1
Notman's series of photographs on the lumber trade begins in the early spring of 1871 when the snow is still deep upon the ground. Whether it was Notman himself or one of his photographers who took the pictures is not known, but the job was almost certainly done on commission, perhaps from one of the lumber companies or a government department. The result is the most complete set of photographs on the subject, showing in detail the tools and techniques of the trade and the arduous living conditions of the men. Part of the series shows the lumbermen cutting and skidding the logs and hauling them on sleighs to the frozen lakes. This is followed by photographs of the sawmills in Ottawa and Hull, where the logs were cut into lumber, stacked for drying and later loaded into barges for shipment to Montreal and the United States. Other photographs in the series deal with the rafting of square timbers down to the coves at Quebec City, where they were loaded on to ships for the overseas market.
1Fernand Ouellet and Benoît Thériault, "Philemon Wright." Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. VII (1836-1850). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988, pp. 926-928.