View a selection of digital images in the Yale Center for British Art's online catalogue
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/orbis:9719702
Classification:
Drawings & Watercolors
Notes:
The noted Welsh artist and photographic pioneer Calvert Richard Jones (1804-1877) is best remembered for his contributions to early photographic processes, and as a colleague of Henry Fox Talbot. He was born in Swansea, Wales, and grew up in Heathfield House, Mount Pleasant. He attended Oriel College, Oxford, was ordained in 1829, and was installed as Rector of Loughor. He was an enthusiastic painter at an early age, specializing in nautical themes--usually showing ships afloat or at dock. While at Oxford he became friends with the future member of Parliament, C.R.M.Talbot. It was through him that Jones met the pioneering photographer, Henry Fox Talbot--the inventor of the calotype process for making several positive images from a single negative. Jones and Fox Talbot became friends, and (in the mid- to late-1840s) Jones became an important photographic pioneer in his own right, using the calotype process to take early photographs of ships and seamen in and around Swansea Harbor. He is credited with taking the earliest dated photograph in Wales.