Richard Keene (15 May 1825 – December 1894) was an early

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...

photographer. He was a founding member of The Derby Photographic Society in 1884 and the

Photographic Convention of the United Kingdom The Photographic Convention of United Kingdom (PCUK) was founded in 1886 and held its first convention in the city of Derby, England, in August of that year. The founding members were a mixture of professional photographers and wealthy amateurs. ...

in 1886 as well as being an early member of

The Linked Ring The Linked Ring (also known as "The Brotherhood of the Linked Ring") was a British photographic society created to propose and defend that photography was just as much an art as it was a science, motivated to propelling photography further into t ...

Biography

Life

Keene was the son of Richard Keene and Priscilla Kimpton, born in London on 15 May 1825. At the age of three, Keene moved with his family to

Derby Derby ( ) is a city and unitary authority area in Derbyshire, England. It lies on the banks of the River Derwent in the south of Derbyshire, which is in the East Midlands Region. It was traditionally the county town of Derbyshire. Derby gai ...

when his father became the manager of Frost's Silk Mill. He was educated at Thomas Swanwick's Academy and then at Matthew Spencer's Academy in Derby before becoming an apprentice to Thomas Richardson & Sons, printers in

Ashbourne, Derbyshire Ashbourne is a market town in the Derbyshire Dales district in Derbyshire, England. Its population was measured at 8,377 in the 2011 census and was estimated to have grown to 9,163 by 2019. It has many historical buildings and independent sho ...

. He subsequently went to work in their London offices before working for Simpkin Marshall & Co publishers and booksellers. He married Mary Barrow in 1851 and had eight children in total, five sons and 3 daughters, living in Radbourne Street, Derby. He died at his home in Derby in December 1894.

Career

In 1851 Keene returned to Derby from London to set up as a printer, publisher and bookseller in Irongate under the name Richard Keene and Co. He had an early interest in photography and began taking and selling photographs of Derby and Derbyshire and before long photography became the mainstay of his business. He was a friend of the Rev Edward Abney (1811–1914) and his sons

William de Wiveleslie Abney Sir William de Wiveleslie Abney (24 July 1843 – 3 December 1920) was an English astronomer, chemist, and photographer. Life and career Abney was born in Derby, England, the son of Rev. Edward Abney (1811–1892), vicar of St Alkmund's Chu ...

and Charles Edward Abney - all of whom were early photographic experimenters. Keene established a portrait studio and 'Repository of Arts' selling photographs prints and stereoscopic viewers. Keene was a founder member of the Derby Photographic Society in 1884. He was also a founding member of the

which held its inaugural convention in Derby in 1886. He was a skilled

stereoscopic Stereoscopy (also called stereoscopics, or stereo imaging) is a technique for creating or enhancing the depth perception, illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision. The word ''stereoscopy'' derives . Any stere ...

photographer Darrah, William Culp (1977) 'The World of Stereographs' Pub. Land Yacht Press, Nashville, Tennessee and worked with his friend and fellow Derby photographer John Warwick on an acclaimed series 'Derbyshire Stereographs' published in the late 1850s. These are usually credited as 'By John Warwick, Published by Richard Keene'. Keene gave an account of his early photographic work with Warwick in a later lecture, which is reprinted in Maxwell Craven's biography of Keene. In this he makes clear that this early stereoscopic work was a joint enterprise between the two men. He was invited to become a member of

, an exclusive group of photographers committed to promoting artistic principles in photography. Fellow members included

Henry Peach Robinson Henry Peach Robinson (9 July 1830, Ludlow, Shropshire – 21 February 1901, Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent) was an English pictorialist photographer best known for his pioneering combination printing - joining multiple negatives or prints to form ...

Frank Sutcliffe Francis Meadow (Frank) Sutcliffe (6 October 1853 – 31 May 1941) was an English pioneering photographic artist whose work presented an enduring record of life in the seaside town of Whitby, England, and surrounding areas, in the late Victoria ...

and

Alfred Stieglitz Alfred Stieglitz (January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946) was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was kno ...

. Through this organisation and the Photographic Convention he had regular contact with some of the most prominent and successful photographers of the day. Image:Keene_stereo_recto.jpg, 'Lovers walk

Matlock Bath Matlock Bath is a village and civil parish in Derbyshire, England. It lies in the Peak District, south of Matlock on the main A6 road, and approximately halfway between Buxton and Derby. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was ...

' Recto. A stereoscopic photograph from Keene's series 'Derbyshire Stereographs. Circa 1858. Image:Keene_stereo_verso.jpg, 'Lovers walk Matlock Bath' Verso. Image:PCUK_1886.jpg, Members at the inaugural meeting of the Photographic Convention of the United Kingdom, Derby, 1886 Image:PCUK_1886_key.jpg, Partial key to the 1886 Convention photograph showing 1.

William England William England (died 1896) was a successful Victorian photographer specialising in stereoscopic photographs. Life Sources disagree on his date of birth, with dates from 1816 to 1830 quoted by different authors. In the 1840s England ran a London ...

, 2. Alexander Tate. 3.

Alfred Seaman Alfred Seaman was a professional Victorian and Edwardian photographer who ran a network of photographic portrait studios in the Midlands and North of England.‘Death of Mr Alfred Seaman’ British Journal of Photography, July 1910 He published ...

. 4. Richard Keene

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Keene, Richard 19th-century English photographers Pioneers of photography Artists from Derby 1825 births 1894 deaths Photographers from Derbyshire