Group of Colliers Wifes Llansamlet Swansea 1854
John Wheeley Gough Gutch (1809 - 1862)
Category
Photographs
Date
1854
Materials
Measurements
140 mm (H)105 mm (W)
Order this imageCollection
Fox Talbot Museum, Wiltshire
NT 103326
Caption
Described in a pencil annotation as colliers’ wives, these five women stand united in dress and pose. They were married to miners working the coal pits at Llansamlet, near Swansea. John Wheeley Gough Gutch spent years working there as a surgeon before avidly pursuing the art and science of photography. Pasted into an album of salted paper and diluted albumen prints, this portrait of local women – acknowledging a key Welsh industry – sits beside others of friends and family, as well as landscape photography of scenic views in Wales and elsewhere. One of the women makes a second appearance in the album in some lively collaged pages. Other photographs in the album are by Gutch’s pioneering contemporaries. Photography had interested him from its inception and he even corresponded with its inventor, William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–77), in 1841.
Summary
A salted paper print (pasted into an album) of five women identified through a pencil annotation beneath, as 'colliers' wives' married to miners at Llansamlet near Swansea. They each wear traditional Welsh dress. Photographed in 1854 by John Wheeley Gough Gutch, a surgeon who later pursued photography. Two further photographs of other sitters are placed beneath this image on the album page.
Marks and inscriptions
"Group of Colliers Wifes Llansamlet Swansea 1854" hand written in pencil under image
Makers and roles
John Wheeley Gough Gutch (1809 - 1862), photographer