T&R Annan & Sons Ltd.

Corporate body

T&R Annan & Sons Ltd.

1855-

A family photography firm, founded in Glasgow by Thomas Annan (1829-1887) in 1855.
Originally from Dairsie in Fife and after an apprenticeship as a lithographic writer, Thomas Annan took up employment in 1849 with Joseph Swan, owner of a lithographic printworks in Glasgow. He then set up business with a trainee chemist called Berwich in 1855 as photographers with a colotype studio at 86 Woodlands Road. Berwick soon left to pursue a medical career and in 1857 he set up business on his own at 116 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow.
Originally specialists in architectural photography, a lot of his business at that time came from photographing country houses and mansions around Glasgow, and also from photographing paintings whilst at the houses. He also created carte-de-visite portraits and produced scenic and stereoscopic views, but he became best known for his artistic portraits and landscapes.
By 1859, Thomas Annan was based at 200 Hope Street and had a printworks in the town of Hamilton, east of Glasgow. During the 1860’s he began to specialise in creating photographic reproductions of paintings, the skill for which he would be most celebrated during his lifetime. His first notable commission in this area was in 1862 for the Glasgow Art Union. The next came in 1865, from David Octavius Hill, when Annan photographed his enormous painting of the founding of the Free Church. Annan produced thousands of prints of the painting using the new permanent carbon process developed by his mentor Joseph Swan, for which he purchased the patent rights for Scotland a year later. On Hill's death in 1870, Thomas inherited many early calotype negatives from the studio, from which he made and exhibited carbon prints.
At this time Thomas Annan lived next door to David Livingstone and took a well known portrait of him. He also took a series of images documenting the new Glasgow Water Work Scheme including a view of Queen Victoria at the Official opening. In 1868, Annan undertook what is now his most famous work. He was commissioned by the Glasgow City Improvement Trust to document the slum dwellings of Glasgow's East End prior to demolition. This is claimed to be one of the first times photography was used as documentary evidence. Annan used the most sensitive technique available, the wet collodion process, to cope with the lack of light in the narrow streets. It was an inconvenient process and photographs required immediate development and fixing, necessitating the use of a portable darkroom. Thus, three years were required to take 35 photographs. Two editions of 'The Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow' were published in Annan's lifetime, in 1872 and 1877.
Thomas Annan's brother Robert joined the firm in 1869 to assist with administration, and in 1873, the studio moved to 153 Sauchiehall Street, where it also served as an art gallery. The Gallery side of the firm flourished in the late 1800s when a major new painting would be borrowed from an artist or collector, it then became a great social occasion to view this piece in a dimly lit room then purchase a photogravure print of it. During the 1880s, the firm established an autotype works in Lenzie and also an engraving works in South Lambeth, London. In 1881, the Annan firm employed eight men, seventeen women and four boys.
In 1887, at the age of 57, Thomas took his own life. Upon Thomas Annan’s death his elder son, John (1863-1947), took over the business which became 'Annan and Sons' in 1888. John specialised in architectural photography, and is thought to have been responsible for the firm's engineering photographs. Annan’s younger son James Craig (1864-1946) had set up a photo-engraving business with Donald Swan in London in 1885, but upon his father's death returned to Glasgow to become a partner in the family business.
Like his father, James created new prints from Adamson and Hill's original calotypes, this time employing the new technique of photogravure which he had learned alongside his father from its inventor Karl Klíc in Vienna. He printed etchings and engravings by Scottish artist Muirhead Bone among others, and photographed the leading figures in the Glasgow Style movement. James became friendly with the famous Glasgow Architect, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and took the definitive portrait of him with his distinctive "floppy bow tie" as well as many contemporary images of his works.
The Annans took numerous photographs of Glasgow streets and buildings; were official photographers to the Glasgow International Exhibitions of 1888, 1901, and 1911; and in 1889, were awarded a Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria as 'Photographers and Photographic Engravers to her Majesty in Glasgow'.
James began to do more personal work from around 1890. He was one of the first to use a hand-held camera and he would manipulate the plates before printing, achieving very different prints from the same plate. He travelled in Europe with Scottish artist David Young Cameron, an etcher, and their joint exhibition in 1892, where some works portrayed the same subject, invited comparisons between the two media.
In the early 1890s, James was admitted to Glasgow Art Club as a 'photographic artist' and to the Linked Ring Brotherhood, a society formed to promote photography as fine art.
From the mid-1890s, James became an influential, international figure with exhibitions and one-man shows across Europe and the USA, and his photography and writing was widely reproduced in journals. It was through his correspondence with James from 1895 onwards that the American photographer Alfred Stieglitz became interested in the early Scottish pioneers of photography, introducing them to the American public and photographers worldwide via his journal Camera Work. James convened the photographic committee for the 1901 Glasgow International Exhibition, and two years later, buoyed by the financial success of the Exhibition, the firm commissioned Honeyman, Keppie & Mackintosh to design new premises at 518 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow.
The gallery side of the firm gradually evolved into selling paintings and etchings rather than photographic prints of them. Many famous artists exhibited in Annan's over the years including a show by L.S. Lowry in 1946. In 2006, Douglas Annan, the fifth generation of the family, left the business to concentrate on the photographic archive, and the Annan Gallery in 164 Woodlands Road now bears no family connection.

The archives of the Glasgow School of Art.
The Catalogue of Charles Rennie Mackintosh Architecture, University of Glasgow.