Frank Meadow Sutcliffe (1853-1941) was a British pioneering photographer whose work captured an enduring record of life of the North Yorkshire coastal town Whitby, England and its surrounding area. Although he made his living with portrait photography and was highly acclaimed in this field, winning numerous medals at international exhibitions, he is now remembered for his atmospheric studies of the fishing and farming community of Whitby and its way of life that was becoming obsolete. His images, which relied upon his talent for composition, the use of selective focus, and a close familiarity with the local farming and fishing community, earned him distinction in the emerging British pictorialist movement.

Born in Leeds, Frank Meadow Sutcliffe was the son of Thomas Sutcliffe, an artist, lecturer and art critic who encouraged him to experiment with his printing press and other artistic pursuits from an early age. In 1870 the family moved to Whitby, a thriving tourist resort and fishing village where they had often spent their summer holidays. After his father died the following year, he became the head of the family at age eighteen and turned to studio portraiture to support his mother and seven younger siblings. Sutcliffe sought photographic commissions, completing projects for the well-known landscape photographer Francis Frith (1822-1898) from 1872-73 and for the art critic John Ruskin (1819-1900) in 1873. After these experiences, he opened a portrait studio in the fashionable London-area spa town of Tunbridge Wells in 1875, which met with financial disaster and closed the following year. He then returned to Whitby and set up a successful studio that he would maintain for forty-six years. While portraiture paid his bills, Sutcliffe spent his free time photographing the inhabitants of Whitby’s harborside and the farmland of nearby Eskdale. These carefully composed, picturesque scenes, which convey his unsurpassed familiarity with and high regard for Whitby’s environs and community, gained him international recognition.

Sutcliffe first exhibited his photographs in 1881 at an exhibition in Newcastle and was quickly honored with the first one-man exhibition held by the Camera Club in London (1888) and then a solo show at the Royal Photographic Society (1891). By 1905 he had won sixty-two medals and other awards at exhibitions in England and abroad. Highly regarded among Pictorial photographers, he became a founding member of the Brotherhood of the Linked Ring in 1892 and was later made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 1935.

In addition to his photographic pursuits, Sutcliffe regularly wrote articles for photographic journals and had a weekly column, “Photography Notes,” in the Yorkshire Weekly Post from 1908-1930. He closed his portrait studio in 1922 to become curator of the museum of the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society, a post he would hold until just before his death in 1941.

Today, Sutcliffe’s work can be found in many museum collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; National Portrait Gallery, London; Preus Museum, Horten, Norway; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Art Institute of Chicago; Seattle Art Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.