Sarah Anne Bright facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Sarah Anne Bright
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Sarah Anne Bright
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| Born | 1793 Bristol, England
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| Died | 1866 Bristol, England
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| Nationality | British |
| Known for | Photography |
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Notable work
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Quillan Leaf |
Sarah Anne Bright (1793–1866) was an English artist and a very early photographer. She created some of the oldest surviving photographs made by a woman. For a long time, people didn't know she had made these pictures. It wasn't until 2015 that her initials were found on a special type of photograph called a photogram. This discovery helped show her important role in the history of photography.
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Who Was Sarah Anne Bright?
Sarah Anne Bright was born in 1793 in Bristol, England. She was one of nine children. Her father, Richard Bright, was a successful merchant and banker. He was very interested in science. In 1823, he even helped start the Bristol Institution for the Advancement of Science, Literature and the Arts. We don't know much else about Sarah Anne Bright's personal life.
How Was Her Work Discovered?
Sarah Anne Bright's amazing work as an early photographer was found by chance. In 2008, a group of old photographs, known as the Quillan Collection, was going to be sold at an auction house called Sotheby's in New York. A photography dealer named Jill Quasha had put this collection together between 1988 and 1990.
The Mystery of the Quillan Leaf
One of the pictures in the Quillan Collection was a photogram, which is a picture made without a camera. It's now famous as The Quillan Leaf. At first, experts thought it might have been made by William Henry Fox Talbot, a famous pioneer of photography.
However, when a top expert on Fox Talbot, Larry Schaaf, looked at it, he said it definitely wasn't his work. Because no one knew who made it, Sotheby's listed it as "Photographer Unknown" in their auction catalog. The catalog included many notes from Schaaf about the picture.
Tracing the Photograph's History
The Quillan Leaf came from an old album that belonged to Henry Bright of Ham Green, Bristol. This album originally held seven photograms, along with some watercolors and drawings. By the time of the auction, only the photograms were still there.
The print had a clear "W" mark on the front, plus what looked like the initials "H.B." Larry Schaaf first thought the "W" might stand for Thomas Wedgwood, another early photography pioneer. He even wondered if the picture could be as old as 1805! Because there was so much uncertainty about who made it and how old it was, Sotheby's decided to remove it from the sale. They wanted more time to research it.
Solving the Puzzle: Sarah Anne Bright's Initials
Larry Schaaf then started looking into connections between Henry Bright and other photographers in the Bristol area. He found out that the "W" on the print was actually a mark from William West. William West was known for making early photographic papers in Bristol around 1839. This helped to figure out the correct date for the print.
Further research led Schaaf to an exciting discovery. The initials that looked like "H.B." on the leaf print were actually "S.A.B."! He compared this handwriting to initials on watercolors that were known to be made by Sarah Anne Bright. The handwriting matched perfectly.
In June 2015, Larry Schaaf announced his findings at a lecture at the University of Lincoln. He concluded that Sarah Anne Bright had indeed made The Quillan Leaf. This discovery finally gave Sarah Anne Bright the recognition she deserved as an important early photographer.
