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B+WCOMMENT
All pictures © National Media Museum/SSPLBEHIND THE SCENES AT THE
NATIONAL MEDIA MUSEUM
In the last of his fascinating series from the National Media Museum,
Colin Harding looks at the work of Frank Meadow Sutcliffe,whose long and varied photographic life centred on the northern
seaside town of Whitby.
F
rank Meadow Sutcliffe was
born in Leeds in 1853. His
father was a professional
artist and amateur
photographer so Sutcliffe grew
up in an environment that
shaped his future career. He took
up photography as a teenager and
by the age of 19 was taking
souvenir views of Yorkshire
abbeys for the firm of Francis
Frith. In 1875 Sutcliffe moved
to Tunbridge Wells where he
opened a studio as a professionalportrait photographer. However,
the business wasn’t a success and
the following year he moved to
Whitby, where he was to live for
the rest of his life, and opened a
studio there.
Whitby being a seaside town,
Sutcliffe’s work in the studio was
very seasonal and he found thathe had time on his hands for
much of the year. To supplement
his income and to satisfy his
frustrated artistic aspirations,
he escaped from his studio
whenever possible and began to
photograph Whitby and its
environs, and the local people. It
is for these photographs thatSutcliffe is renowned. A fellow
photographer, Harold Hood,
called Sutcliffe ‘the pictorial
Boswell of Whitby’.
Sutcliffe usually rejected the
formal compositional style
adopted by photographers such
as Henry Peach Robinson,
preferring a more naturalistic
approach. Occasionally, however,
he was happy to pose his subjects
to get the end result he wanted.
For what is probably his most
famous picture, The Water Rats,The Water Rats, Frank Meadow Sutcliffe, 1886.‘For what is probably his most famous picture, Th e
Water Rats, he paid each of the young boys in the
photograph a penny to pose in Whitby harbour.’78-79_BEHIND_THE_SCENES_174 ER/MB.indd 7878-79_BEHIND_THE_SCENES_174 ER/MB.indd 78 29/01/2015 10:5429/01/2015 10:54