Photograph, view of arch, Bristol 1847, Calvert Jones

View through a medieval archway with a man in a top hat on the right. The view through to a street ends with the spire of a church. The photograph is faded to the right and lower edges.

Purchased in 1983

Calvert Richard Jones was one of the first to learn of W.H. F Talbot's photographic discoveries in the late 1830s through Talbot's friends and relations who lived near to Jones in South Wales. Jones subsequently became one of the few Britons to produced a substantial body of calotypes in Britain and abroad. His work stands out in the early development of photography because of his ability to fuse his technical skill with the influence of his training as a watercolorist.

Like many of Jones' photographs made in Bristol, this print of St John's Gateway in the old city wall focuses on the architecture of an earlier period. At a time when parts of old Bristol were being lost to Victorian development, both Jones and Hugh Owen, a contemporary of his, photographed the same arch from an almost identical viewpoint. Owen's photograph, now lost, can be seen in Reece Winstone, Bristol's Earliest Photographs, 1974. This photograph by Jones includes a top hatted figure, which may be Jones himself. In a second similar image by Jones, PH.40-1983, the figure is absent.

St John's gateway is the only surviving gateway to the medieval city wall of Bristol. The wall enclosed a small area in a settlement already bounded by two rivers. There are only four main streets inside the walls: High Street, Corn Street, Wine Street and Broad Street (shown in this photograph).

This photograph of a mediaeval gateway in the old city wall of Bristol is an early example of the calotype process, the process for making paper negatives invented by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1839. The photographer, Calvert Jones, was introduced to the process by a cousin of Talbot and by mutual friends who lived near Jones in South Wales.

Jones' was a frequent visitor to Bristol and some of his photographs record the architecture of the old city during a time of Victorian industrialisation and development. St John's Gateway is the only surviving gateway in the mediaeval city wall. Many of Jones' photographs reveal his training and ability as a watercolorist. The deep shadow under the arch frames the view up Broad Street to Christ's Church and a top-hatted figure on the right increases the forground interest.

PH.40-1983