Background
Fred Hollyer was born in 1837 in Pentonville, England, United Kingdom.
Fred Hollyer was born in 1837 in Pentonville, England, United Kingdom.
Hollyer established a studio on Pembroke Square, Kensington, England, which became a haven for artists and writers.
A fine landscape and portrait photographer, he is best known for his reproductions of paintings.
Hollyer's photographs of drawings were particularly successful; printed on high-quality paper, they were often mistaken for originals. One of the most popular was a study of three heads by Burne-Jones for The Masque of Cupid.
Hollyer also took studio portraits and specialised in interior and exterior photos of houses. For 30 years, he reserved Mondays for portrait photography in his Pembroke Square studio. His sitters included the artists Walter Crane, William Morris, G. F. Watts, and Burne-Jones; the writers John Ruskin, H. G. Wells, and George Bernard Shaw; and the actresses Mrs Patrick Campbell and Ellen Terry.
Quotes from others about the person
In Hollyer's obituary the London Times wrote: "Hollyer stood to mass reproduction in the relation of the 'private press' to commercial printing. .. . In workmanship he was extremely fastidious, giving personal attention to every stage of the process, so that the final result was not so much a photograph of a painting as a translation of its qualities in photographic terms."