Collection RMA - Robert Moyes Adam Papers

Identity area

Reference code

GB 235 RBG/2/RMA

Title

Robert Moyes Adam Papers

Date(s)

  • 1903 - 1949 (Creation)

Level of description

Collection

Extent and medium

2 boxes in the Archives, but Adam's photographs can be found throughout the photography section and makes up the bulk of RBGE's extensive glass plate negative collection.

Context area

Name of creator

(1885-1967)

Biographical history

Born Carluke, Lanarkshire 1885; died Edinburgh 1967
After studying science at Heriot Watt College and drawing at Edinburgh College of Art, Adam started work at RBGE in 1903 preparing lecture illustrations for the Regius Keeper, Isaac Bayley Balfour. In 1914 he was made a permanent member of staff as assistant in charge of the studio and in 1915 promoted to the new post of Photographer and Artist, remaining in this post until his retirement in 1949. He became official artist to the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, but Adam became best known as one of the foremost landscape photographers in Scotland, illustrating publications such as Quigley’s ‘The Highlands of Scotland’, 1936, and publishing pictures regularly in the Scots Magazine, the Scotsman and Picture Post. In the later twentieth Century his mountain photographs have provided conservationists and landscape historians with a reliable historic record of the landscape and rural life. He continued to use his heavy 1908 half plate camera, printing all the photographs himself in a style difficult to replicate today and his negatives are now in the collection of St. Andrews University.
Source: DNB; Bown's '4 Gardens in 1'; Desmond's Dictionary; Fletcher & Brown's 'RBGE 1670-1970'
by D.W.
see also: https://stories.rbge.org.uk/archives/28160

Archival history

Immediate source of acquisition or transfer

Content and structure area

Scope and content

various photographs and illustrations
series of papers donated in February 1978 by Mary Noble including a leaflet for a Scottish Arts Council Exhibition in Charlote Square, March 1970; photocopy of his obituary in The Scotsman in 1967 and two excerpts from the Scots Magazine, September and October 1954 containing two parts of an article about Adam and his photography.

Appraisal, destruction and scheduling

Accruals

System of arrangement

Conditions of access and use area

Conditions governing access

Conditions governing reproduction

not to be copied without permission from RBGE

Language of material

Script of material

Language and script notes

Physical characteristics and technical requirements

Finding aids

Allied materials area

Existence and location of originals

Existence and location of copies

Related units of description

Related descriptions

Notes area

Alternative identifier(s)

Access points

Subject access points

Name access points

Genre access points

Description control area

Description identifier

GB 235 RMA

Institution identifier

Rules and/or conventions used

Status

Level of detail

Minimal

Dates of creation revision deletion

Language(s)

Script(s)

Sources

Accession area

Related subjects

Related people and organizations

Related genres

Physical storage

  • Box: A02
  • Box: A03
  • Shelf: D:3:3
  • Art Cabinet: B:4