Man seated in the garden of Rheola House, Neath.

Two part panorama, left side of PH.80-1983
A corner view of a country house with two elevations of the building visible. Centrally placed, the building has a clear expanse of sky above and a wide lawn spreading across in the foreground. A fir tree obscures the front corner of the building and a man sits on a chair in the centre of the foreground.
Salted paper print with general fading, particularly to the edges, and finger mark on tree foliage on the left.

During the 1830s William Henry Fox Talbot invented a way of making paper negatives and from them multiple paper prints. In doing so, he laid the foundations of modern photography. Calvert Richard Jones learned of these developments in 1839 through a neighbour, who was a cousin of Talbot. Jones made many pictures in the West of England and South Wales, where he lived. He also travelled widely, making photographs on the continent. Jones' work stands out in the early development of photography because he was one of the first to apply a schooled artist's eye to the medium.

This early two-part panorama is of Rheola House, South Wales nestling into the surrounding hills . The composition is similar to an earlier pencil and ink study made by Jones in 1836. Like his drawing, Jones has included groups of figures in front of the house, although the arrangements are less successful in the photographic version. The single seated figure in this half of the panorama may be Jones himself.

Rheola House is near Neath, South Wales. An estate of 120 acres, it was the home of John Edwards, who took over the property in 1829. He assumed the name of his benefactor, William Vaughan, and became known as John Edwards Vaughan. Papers from the Rheola Estate are held by the Neath Antiquarian Society at the Mechanics Institute, Church Place, Neath and at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.

PH.79-1983