BLOG 17 MARCH
In my map blog of 11 March, I said I would discuss the visual images held by the Library. I use the term visual images quite deliberately because although there are different types of imagery, their subject matter remains the same. The types of material of course are topographical prints, drawings, paintings and photographs.
Let’s start with the original works, the paintings and sketches and the prints that were often made of them. These can be bound volumes such as the lovely drawings of John Parker and Frances Elizabeth Wynne or they can be loose drawings like the Ingleby and Warwick Smith collections. Some of them are by internationally renowned artists such as Turner, others are by amateur artists – John Parker and Frances Elizabeth are good examples of these – but they all have one thing in common, they are either by Welsh artists or artists living in Wales or they depict Welsh subjects, both people and places. And many of these original works became topographical prints, both ‘penny plain and twopence coliured’.
The same is true of the photographs, Wales has played a seminal part in the history of photography from the early pioneering days, witness the work of William Henry Fox Talbot and Calvert Richard. One of the earliest commercial photographers, John Thomas, was Welsh and his collection, just like that of Geoff Charles, show Wales at a time of rapid change and development.
When it comes to images of localities, the pictures and photographs show many of the same places, the places that we think of today as being on the tourist trail, Abergavenny, Cardigan, Bangor, Betws y Coed, and Snowdonia, they are well documented in the Library’s collections of visual materials. And yet, there is always a subtle difference between the original works and the photographs and that is the way in which they treat people. Apart from portraits of individuals, most original works seem to treat the ordinary people as unimportant. Even an artist like Julius Caesar Ibbotson, who is clearly fond of people and who shows that by making members of his crowd scenes individual, uses human beings as little more than measuring sticks to show how grand and sublime the scenery or the ruins being painted were. But the photographs show people as people, for the first time, in collections like John Thomas, we see individuals from ordinary everyday life being portrayed, the photograph, of course being cheaper and less time consuming than the artist and his paint, was cheaper to buy and more could afford them. The camera became an important part of all our lives and although studio photographers still exist we are all, in a very real sense, our own photographers.
Between them, the artists and the photographers recorded the places and people of Wales and, you never know, it is perfectly possible that one of your ancestors is quietly waiting for you in our collections.
Lona Jones