Background
Frank Meadow Sutcliffe was born on October 6, 1853, in Leeds, United Kingdom to the painter Thomas Sutcliffe and Sarah Lorentia Button. He was the eldest of eight children, and as a child, he slept in his father's studio.
Frank Meadow Sutcliffe was born on October 6, 1853, in Leeds, United Kingdom to the painter Thomas Sutcliffe and Sarah Lorentia Button. He was the eldest of eight children, and as a child, he slept in his father's studio.
Frank Sutcliffe had an elementary education at a dame school before moving into the new technology of photography. His father moved the family to Whitby in 1870 with the hope of commissions, but he died a year later when Francis was 18, leaving him as head of the family.
Frank Sutcliffe took up photography around 1871, then established a studio in Whitby, a coastal town in Yorkshire, after having worked, briefly, for the large photographic firm of Francis Frith.
Frank Sutcliffe wrote a column that was originated by Horsely Hinton, "Photography Notes," for the Yorkshire Weekly Post from 1908 to about 1930. He also contributed articles to many newspapers and magazines, Amateur Photography among them.
Frank Sutcliffe was the curator of Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society from 1923 to 1940. 1941. He was widely exhibited; he was the first one-man show to be held by the Camera Club in 1888.
Although Frank Sutcliffe worked commercially as a portrait and carte de visite photographer, he is best known for his personal work, in which he photographed small sea-town fishermen and farmers and their families at work and at play. Frank Sutcliffe was noted especially for his naturalistic and spontaneous style, despite the fact that his early work was with unwieldy collodion wet plates. He produced many varieties of prints - albumen, silver, carbon, and platinum and in his later years was absorbed with the new Kodak hand-held cameras.
Stern Realities
1890Women, c.1890
Portrait of Polly Swallow
1889Girl on the shore
1889Three happy boys
1889Fisher girl
1890Fisher people 1889-1890
Whitby
1890Three Naked Boys Around a Coble
1880Whitby winter
Whitby
1890Farmers Whitby / Dinner Time, c. 1889-1891
Whitby
1890Farmer people Whitby
Waterrats, (Sea Urchins)
1886Women
1890A founding-member of The Linked Ring in 1892, he was made an Honorary Fellow of RPS in 1941.
Frank Sutcliffe married Eliza Weatherill Duck, the daughter of a local bootmaker, on 1 January 1875 and had a son and three daughters at his home in Sleights.