| Dates: | 1853, 6 October - 1941, 31 May | | Born: | Great Britain, England, Leeds, Headingly | | Active: | England | | Gender: | Male |
He was a portrait photographer by profession but is best known for his photographs of the people, the harbor, the boats and the sea of Whitby in the north east of England. There is great love in these sympathetic and informed studies which sold as well to the tourist trade of the late nineteenth century as they do today.
[Courtesy of Pam Roberts]Preparing biographies
General reading
1888, November, ‘Mr. Frank Sutcliffe's Pictures at the Camera Club‘, Photographic News, vol.13, pp.188 [Δ]
Frank, Peter, 1976, ‘History and Photographs: Frank Meadow Sutcliffe (1853-1941)‘, History Workshop Journal, vol.2, pp.94 [Δ]
Readings on, or by, individual photographers
Hiley, Michael, 1974, Frank Sutcliffe: Photographer of Whitby, (London: Gordon Fraser) [Δ]
Sutcliffe, Frank Meadow, 1979, Frank Meadow Sutcliffe, (Millerton, NY: Aperture) [Δ]
If you feel this list is missing a significant book or article please let me know - Alan - alan@luminous-lint.com | | Portraits
If you have a portrait of this photographer or know of the whereabouts of one we would be most grateful.
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Family history
If you are related to this photographer and interested in tracking down your extended family we can place a note here for you to help. It is free and you would be amazed who gets in touch.
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 | Frank Meadow Sutcliffe: A Passing Shower |
|  | Frank Meadow Sutcliffe: Excitement |
|  | Frank Meadow Sutcliffe: Men Standing on Pier |
|  | Frank Meadow Sutcliffe: Portraits |
|  | Frank Meadow Sutcliffe: The Ingathering |
|  | Frank Meadow Sutcliffe: Whitby |
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All photographs by this photographer
Frank Meadow Sutcliffe
English, 1853-1941
Frank Meadow Sutcliffe was born in 1853 in Headingly, Leads, England. He became active in photography around 1870, and established a studio in the Yorkshire coastal town of Whitby, where he was very successful as a carte de visite and portrait photographer. He wrote extensively about photography and from 1908 until about 1930 had a column in the Yorkshire Weekly Post and contributed several other articles to magazines and newspapers, including Amateur Photography. Sutcliffe was a distinguished photographer of his day and was a founding member of The Linked Ring, as well as an Honorary Fellow of RPS. The first photographer to have a one-man show held by the Camera Club in 1888, his work was frequently exhibited and widely respected, as is demonstrated by the sixty-two medals he received throughout his lifetime. Sutcliffe experimented with many varieties of prints - albumen, silver, carbon and platinum - and in his later years also did experimental photography for Kodak, using their hand-held camera.
Although he was successful as a commercial photographer, Sutcliffe is best known for his personal landscape and genre prints, which he took in Whitby. He was influenced by P. H. Emerson and early realist French painters. Sutcliffe focused on the small-town inhabitants of Whitby - the fisherman, farmers, their wives and their children at work and at play. He is especially recognized as being able to capture people in a natural, unposed state despite the fact that the slow technique of wet plates that he often used made it difficult to do so. For further information on Sutcliffe see Frank Meadow Sutcliffe, published by Aperture with text by Michael Hiley.
[Contributed by Lee Gallery]
| Wikipedia has a biography of this photographer. | Show on this site | Go to website | | Getty Research, Los Angeles, USA has an ULAN (Union List of Artists Names Online) entry for this photographer. This is useful for checking names and they frequently provide a brief biography. | | Go to website | Grove Art Online (www.groveart.com) has a biography of this artist.
[NOTE: This is a subscription service and you will need to pay an annual fee to access the content.] | Show on this site | Go to website |
The following books are useful starting points to obtain brief biographies but they are not substitutes for the monographs on individual photographers. |
• Beaton, Cecil & Buckland, Gail 1975 The Magic Eye: The Genius of Photography from 1839 to the Present Day (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown & Company) p.78 [Useful short biographies with personal asides and one or more example images.]
• Witkin, Lee D. and Barbara London 1979 The Photograph Collector’s Guide (London: Secker and Warburg) p.248-249 [Long out of print but an essential reference work - the good news is that a new edition is in preparation.]
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If there is an analysis of a single photograph or a useful self portrait I will highlight it here. |
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