EVOCATIVE scenes captured in sepia by Victorian photographer Frank Meadow Sutcliffe are now on show at Brantwood.

The location is significant because, back in 1873, John Ruskin invited the young cameraman to take photographs around his Coniston home after admiring one of his pictures.

As a budding professional portrait photographer in the seaside harbour town of Whitby, Sutcliffe advertised himself as 'photographer to John Ruskin' - and it is tempting to think that the art critic and philanthropist would have been proud of the future success of Sutcliffe, who did so much to promote photography as an art form.

The exhibition, Frank Meadow Sutcliffe - An Artist with a Camera, features a selection of images from The Sutcliffe Gallery in Whitby, where for the last 56 years the Shaw family have been custodians of the collection.

Visitors from all over the world make pilgrimages to the gallery and are fascinated to see how working people lived in Victorian England.

The pictures are described as portraying "an immediacy and realism of everyday life that paintings of the period sometimes struggle to emulate", and the Shaw family say they are "always conscious of being responsible for a great national archive".

Sutcliffe was born in Leeds in 1853, just 14 years after the birth of photography. His father, Thomas, was an artist, lecturer and art critic, and in 1870 the family relocated to Whitby, on the North Yorkshire coast, where they had often spent summer holidays.

Sutcliffe became head of the family aged just 18, after his father died, and he set about making his living with a camera. Whitby was a thriving tourist resort and he became very successful taking studio portraits of wealthy Victorian holidaymakers. While these pictures paid the bills, what Sutcliffe really wanted to capture was the everyday working people of Whitby and the surrounding countryside.

His affection and respect for the town and its people shines through his work, culminating in photographs of the highest technical merit that also display great artistry.

Between 1880 and 1894, Sutcliffe was awarded more than 60 gold, silver and bronze medals at exhibitions as far a field as New York, Tokyo, Berlin, Paris, Chicago and Vienna, as well as at major exhibitions at home.

The exhibition at Brantwood's Severn Gallery features a selection of framed, large-format sepia photos, mainly people studies and farming scenes such as 'Dinnertime', taken in Foulbriggs Field, Lealholm Hall Farm with Hill House Farm in the distance.

An Artist with a Camera runs until March 20, open Wednesday-Sunday, 10.30am-4pm.

Admission is included with a house or garden ticket. For more details phone 015394 41396 or visit www.brantwood.org.uk