627
lotype, and he was in partnership with C.D. Fredericks at
one point in his career, and then with his son, Benjamin.
As well as photographing celebrities, such as Dickens,
Gurney undertook theatre photography. Gurney had
no problems with working in what had been seen as a
morally dubious part of society. He also frequented a
well known medium and psychic artist based in New
York. This may be why he was the fi rst to photograph
a dead president. He photographed Abraham Lincoln,
in his open coffi n, on April 24th 1865. This photograph
was hidden in the Illinois State Historical Society, until
its discovery in 1952 by a fi fteen year old Ronald Riet-
veld, where it was promptly confi scated, until its later
rediscovery, again by Rietveld.
Jo Hallington
GUTCH, JOHN WHEELEY GOUGH
(1808–1862)
English photographer and editor
John Wheeley Gough Gutch was born at Kingsdown,
Bristol, in south-west England on 23 December 1808.
He left Britain for Italy in 1831 and in December 1832
married Elizabeth Frances Nicholson and a year later a
son was born.Gutch worked as a medical practitioner in
Florence and, before the invention of photography, made
many pencil drawings of Florence and the Italian Lakes,
probably with the aid of a camera obscura (or camera
lucida). Interestingly, William Henry Fox Talbot was at-
tempting to sketch in Italy in the early 1830’s and it was
his failure to satisfactorily record scenes with a similar
instrument that led to his idea of photography.Gutch and
his family left Italy in 1835 and returned to Britain where
he appears to have been practising medicine at Swansea
in South Wales, where, in March 1838, his young son,
John Frederick Lavender Gutch, sadly died.
Gutch was interested in a wide variety of scien-
tifi c pursuits—he was a member of the Meteorological
Society of Great Britain and a fellow of the Linnean
Society. He maintained a tide gauge at Swansea and
corresponded with astronomer royal Sir George Biddell
Airy (1801–1892).He was also interested in geological
phenomena and later made many photographic stud-
ies of quarries and rock outcrops.Insects were another
fascination, having a particular interest in Coleoptera
(winged beetles), which he collected on his travels.
Around 1851 he abandoned medicine and became a
Queen’s messenger, a government post which involved
taking diplomatic dispatches to European cities.It was
on a mission to Constantinople that he became ill and
suffered the partial paralysis which forced his retire-
ment from diplomatic service and later prompted his
photographic quests “...in Search of Health and the
Picturesque.”
Gutch was experimenting with photography as early
as 1841 (no early work is known) and was in contact
with the photographic chemist Robert Hunt.Hunt passed
on a letter from Gutch to Talbot which asked Talbot’s
advice on preparing paper negatives.Talbot replied,
sending Gutch a “specimen of good iodised paper”
and “a few specimens as requested.” (Schaaf.The Cor-
respondence of WHF Talbot. 14 Sept 1841, document
no: 04333).
Gutch was born and lived in the south west of
England, which became the birthplace of early British
photography; Talbot was at Lacock in Wiltshire and
many well-known early photographers worked and
lived in and around Bristol and nearby South Wales.
These included: Nevil Story-Maskelyne, John Dillwyn
Llewelyn, Hugh Owen, the Reverend Calvert Richard
Jones and the Rev. Francis Lockey along with photog-
rapher friends of Gutch: John Morgan and John Bevan
Hazard. Gutch knew and photographed the early pho-
tographer, the Reverend George W. Bridges, who also
lived in Gloucestershire. He was also in contact with
the photographic printer and editor of Photographic
Notes, Thomas Sutton, who was at St. Brelade’s Bay
on the island of Jersey.
Between 1856 and 1859 Gutch supplied several
articles for Sutton’s Photographic Notes including:
“Recollections and Jottings of a Photographic Tour, Un-
dertaken during the Years 1856–7 [&1858]” and “Posi-
tive Pictures Taken From the Camera of a Peripatetic
Photographer in Search of Health and the Picturesque
1859.” These essays provide some insight into his work
and methods, including his preferred camera (from
1856 he used an Archer’s wet-plate camera, designed
by photographer and inventor Frederick Scott Archer).
This allowed the operator to prepare and develop the
glass negatives within the camera itself, doing away with
the need for a separate darktent. Archer’s camera was,
however, bulky and with Gutch’s infi rmity it would of re-
quired an assistant to help. Many of his landscapes show
Gutch in the image, indicating third-party assistance.
Gutch appears to have travelled to his photographic
destinations mostly by train,often hiring carriages from
railway stations to his chosen location.
Gutch’s preferred subjects were infl uenced largely by
the cult of “The Picturesque.” (At the end of eighteenth
century artist and author William Gilpin (1724-1804)
invented the term “Picturesque Beauty” which he de-
fi ned as: “that which would look well in a picture”).
Gutch avoided photographing industrial, urban Britain
and concentrated rather on recording picturesque scenes:
ruined ancient buildings,geological formations,rocky
streams and trees, particularly old elms and oaks, were
all favorite subjects.
In 1856 Gutch visited the English spa town of Mal-
vern to attempt a cure for his illness. He attended James