628
Manby Gully’s Hydropathic Establishment where Gutch
hoped that the controversial Dr. Gully’s water treatment
would help his paralysis. He also thought that the dis-
cipline of photography would benefi cial to his health.
He spent two months photographing Malvern and the
surrounding areas, recording old houses, lanes and an-
cient trees along with a few small portrait studies. Later
the same year he spent several weeks in Devon, where
he made studies of streams as well as street and beach
scenes (including a few three-part panoramas).
Gutch mainly worked with whole-plate wet-col-
lodion glass negatives and printed his photographs on
salted paper.He mounted his work into slim,soft-cover
albums where he initialled, titled and dated the images,
often decorating the title page to each album with a
photographic collage. The collages were made by plac-
ing leaves, fl owers and feathers in printing frames (in
contact with salted paper) to produce negative images
(photograms) which were then cut up, made into pat-
terns and pasted onto the page, Gutch often writing
an epigraph or dedication in the centre, using quotes
from a wide range of authors and poets, refl ecting
his literary background.Gutch was from a well-read
middle-class background (he edited the annual Liter-
ary and Scientifi c Register for many years) and was
at one time prospective editor of The British Journal
of Photography.
In 1857 Gutch travelled further afi eld, taking his cum-
bersome camera to the English Lake District, Scotland
and North Wales. In “Recollections ...1856–7” Photo-
graphic Notes part 4, vol. 3, no. 60, 1 October 1858, 230.
Gutch wrote that he considered his camera couldn’t do
justice to the Lakeland landscape, it being more suited to
the “brush and the painter.” In consequence he took few
images of the lakes themselves and concentrated on inti-
mate rustic scenes and architecture,spending three days
photographing the ruins of Furness Abbey. In Scotland
he again avoided the natural landscape and concentrated
on ruined castles and abbeys (Photographic illustra-
tions of Scotland 1857 Album, George Eastman House
collection). His visit to North Wales provided a chance
to record a larger variety of his usual subjects such as
quarries, coastal landscapes,cliffs and bridges.
By the Spring of 1858 he was at work recording local
architecture in and around Bristol. In August he headed
further west,spending three months in the Land’s End
area of Cornwall where he photographed rock forma-
tions, quarries, coastal scenes, ancient tombs, local
fi shermen and boats.
By 1859 Gutch had set himself the daunting task of
photographing every church in Gloucestershire (over
500). Even though the Bishop of Bristol and Gloucester,
The Hon. Charles Baring, had promised to order a copy
of each church photographed, this must of been a dif-
fi cult and expensive undertaking.Gutch even purchased
a new Ross Petzval wide-angle lens to aid his task.
Even today it would be a daunting task to record every
church, Gutch, however, managed the remarkable feat
of photographing at least 200 of them in fi ve months
but the church series seems to have been his last major
photographic project;the summer of 1859 had been hot
and perhaps the exhausting task of recording so many
country churches had taken its toll on Gutch’s already
frail health.
Gutch died, less than three years later, on 30 April
1862 at 38, Bloomsbury Square, London, aged 53.
Ian SumnerBiography
Gutch was born on 23 December 1808 in Bristol, Eng-
land, where his father, John Mathew Gutch (1776–1861),
was a journalist, publisher and bookcollector.John Gutch
senior was a former schoolfriend and member of the
literary and scientifi c circle that surrounded the writer
and poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834). Also
in this circle were the early photography experimenters
Thomas Wedgwood and Humphrey Davy.
JWG Gutch trained as a surgeon in Bristol and prac-
tised medicine in Italy and later Swansea, South Wales.
Later he quit medicine and became a Queen’s messen-
ger. He also edited the annual Literary and Scientifi c
Register. He was experimenting with photography as
early as 1841, but did not pursue it seriously until the
mid 1850’s. His busiest years were from 1856–1859
when he travelled around the south west of England,
Wales and Scotland recording architecture and “way-
side scenes.” He showed his work at several Edinburgh
and London Photographic Society exhibitions between
1856–61.See also: Archer, Frederick Scott; Bridges, George
Wilson; Hunt, Robert; Owen, Hugh; Sutton, Thomas;
Talbot, and William Henry Fox.Further Reading
Bartram, Michael, The Pre-Raphaelite Camera. Weidenfeld &
Nicolson. London, 1985.
Belsey, James. Images of Bristol. Victorian Photographers at
Work 1850–1910. Redcliffe Press. Bristol, 1987 (Exhibition
catalogue).
Belsey, A Small Light in the Far West. Victorian Photographers
in Bristol. Bristol Museums and Art Gallery, 1996 (Exhibi-
tion catalogue).
Eagles, Rev. John, The Sketcher. Blackwood & Sons. Edinburgh
& London. 1856. Illustrated with 6 albumen prints by Gutch
(Gernsheim 52).
Sutton, Thomas. Photographic Notes. Jersey. Volumes 3 & 4
(1858–1859) contain several essays by and references to
Gutch.
Winstone, Reece (editor and publisher), Bristol in the 1850’s.
Bristol. 1968.