About This Image

One of Sutcliff's most famous images of a group of young boys all standing in a row with their backs turned to the camera. The boys are wearing ragged clothes and are leaning over a wall to look down at something. The image is also sometimes called "Stern Realities".

Photographic prints of "Excitement" in various media are in the collections of the Detroit Institute of Art; the J. Paul Getty Museum; and the LACMA & Preus Museum. Photogravure copies are also in the Art Institute of Chicago, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the National Galleries of Scotland.

See: Sun Artists, Number 8 (1891).

Frank Meadow Sutcliffe was born on October 6, 1853 in Headingly, Leads, England.

He became active in photography around 1870-71, after his father Thomas Sutcliffe, a well-regarded painter who disdained photography as an art form, passed away. Sutcliffe had aspired to become a painter but switched to photography upon his father's death.

Starting in 1872 he was employed by Francis Frith to take pictures of topographical prospects in Yorkshire. In 1875 he opened his own portrait studio in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, but it did not especially succeed. He returned to his native coastal town Whitby in 1876,where he was very successful as a carte-de-visite and portrait photographer. He wrote extensively about photography, and from 1908 until about 1933 had a column in the Yorkshire Weekly Post, and contributed several other articles to magazines and newspapers, including Amateur Photography. He also was a writer for the magazine of the Photo-Club de Paris, La Revue de Photographie in 1903.

Sutcliffe was a distinguished photographer of his day and was a founding member of The Linked Ring, as well as an Honorary Fellow of RPS. The first photographer to have a one-man show held by the Camera Club in 1888, his work was frequently exhibited and widely respected, as is demonstrated by the 62 medals he received throughout his lifetime.

Sutcliffe experimented with many varieties of prints--albumen, silver, carbon and platinum, and in his later years also did experimental photography for Kodak, using their hand-held camera.

Although he was successful as a commercial photographer, Sutcliffe is best known for his personal landscape and genre prints, which he took in Whitby. He was influenced by P. H. Emerson and early realist French painters. Sutcliffe focused on the small-town inhabitants of Whitby--the fisherman, farmers, their wives and their children at work and at play. He is especially recognized as being able to capture people in a natural, unposed state, despite the fact that the slow technique of wet plates that he often used made it difficult to do so.

At the age of 70, he became the curator of the Whitby Gallery and Museum, he held this post until his death at the age of 87, passing away on May 31, 1941.

Most U.S. domestic Fed Ex ground shipping (Media Mail for books) will be a flat $25 charge except for larger and heavier items, or unless the buyer wants express shipping (email us your requests for the latter). International shipping and insurance costs will be added to the price and must be paid for by the buyer. Pennsylvania buyers must pay appropriate local sales tax. International clients are responsible for their local customs duties and taxes, which will be charged by Fed Ex, which will contact the client prior to delivery.