James Hedderly
Date of birth: 1814 or 1815
Place of birth: Chelsea, London
Date of death: 1885.02.20
Place of death: London
Category: photographer
Identity:
James Hedderly, photographer, married Susannah Saunders (d. by 1861) in 1840. Their children were Mary (b. 1841), James and Henry.
Life:
Hedderly was a painter and signwriter until the mid-1860s, when he became a photographer. He lived in Duke Street, only a short distance from Whistler's house at 7 Lindsey Row, from 1841 until the 1870s, when the street was demolished for the Embankment. He then moved to 21 Riley Street, where The Chelsea, Pimlico and Belgravia Diectory for 1885 notes him as a photographer (also listed is a Mrs Hedderly, laundress at 23 Riley Street).
Whistler was well-acquainted with Hedderly, and probably saw his photographs of old Chelsea before the completion of the Embankment in 1874. Whistler seems to have been a regular customer of Hedderly, who was one of his creditors in 1877.
Bibliography:
UK census 1881; The Chelsea, Pimlico and Belgravia Diectory, London, 1885; Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Whistler Journal, Philadelphia, 1921 , p. 5; Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 2 vols, London and Philadelphia, 1908 , vol. 2, p. 5; Thorp, Nigel, 'Studies in Black and White: Whistler's Photographs in Glasgow University Library' in Fine, Ruth, 'Introduction', in: Ruth Fine (ed.), James McNeill Whistler: A Reexamination, Studies in the History of Art, vol. 19, Washington, DC, 1987, pp. 7-10 , pp. 96-98. MacDonald, Margaret, and Patricia de Montfort, An American in London: Whistler and the Thames, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Addison Gallery of American Art, Freer Gallery of Art, 2013-2014.
