Charles Jones (photographer)

Charles Harry Jones (1866 – 15 November 1959) was an English gardener and photographer, noted for his still lifes of fruit and vegetables.

1902 image of carrots

Biography

Born in Wolverhampton in 1866, although his father was a master butcher, Charles Harry Jones became a gardener.[1] He worked on a number of private estates in England from the 1890s, including Great Ote Hall, near Burgess Hill, Sussex.[2] His gardening was noted for the quality of his flowerbeds and cultivation of fruits and vegetables. He was also ingenious in providing a long season for fruit and vegetables. As a photographer, Jones was noted for his documentation of the fruits of his gardening labours.[2][3] Jones also offered his services as a photographer to other gardeners.

He married in 1894. By 1910 he and his family moved to Lincolnshire, where he died on 15 November 1959, aged ninety-two.[1]

Photographic work

The photographs were probably made between 1895 and 1910, and likely while he was employed at Ote Hall.[1] Jones' work was never exhibited in his lifetime, and was largely unknown even to his family, until the photographic prints were discovered by accident in 1981. Sean Sexton found a suitcase containing hundreds of prints of vegetables, fruits and flowers at Bermondsey antiques market. None of the glass-plate negatives have been located.

Since Sexton's discovery the collection has slowly been dispersed by him through auction[4] and by other means. It has been collected by institutions and private collectors and exhibited at The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Musée de Elysée, Lausanne and at other venues and also been the subject of a book.[1]

References
  1. Sexton, Sean; Johnson, Robert Flynn (1998). The Plant Kingdoms of Charles Jones. Thames&Hudson. p. 128. ISBN 978-0500544631.
  2. "Ote Hall". The Gardener's Chronicle (30 September): 249–250. 1905. Retrieved 17 May 2020.
  3. "Charles Jones:Gardener and Photographer". Garden Museum. Retrieved 17 May 2020.
  4. "Christies Auctions". Christie's. Retrieved 3 March 2014.
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