In her poem, Gerry Stewart shines a light on the overlooked legacy of Sarah Anne Bright, a nineteenth-century artist and photographer who produced one of the earliest surviving photograms initially attributed to William Henry Fox Talbot.
The Quillan Leaf
Sarah Anne Bright, 1793-1896, Early Photographer
Daughter of
and nothing more.
Her wealthy father founded institutes,
an amateur man of science.
She ‘helped’ her brothers
with their scientific studies,
but was shuffled away for 150 years
among family papers
and forgotten watercolours
Seven photograms,
stained silver drawings,
hornbeam leaf and keys,
a shark egg pouch
and the Leaf, separated
and parcelled out
to the highest bidder.
First attributed to this man
and then another,
finally to ‘Unknown Photographer’
while historians traced
the scribbled clues.
Unmarried, no children,
she remains a silhouette,
a set of initials on a negative.
We chase her light,
capturing only its absence.
Her shadow paintings
were remembered in her will,
she knew their importance.
The story behind ‘The Quillan Leaf’
As suggested in my poem, very little is known about Sarah Anne Bright beyond her family connections. Bright was an unmarried woman living at a time where, outside of marriage and children, she would have had few roles or responsibilities. The fact that we have a small painting of her and know her dates of birth and death is only due to the fact that her father was wealthy and influential.
I stumbled across Bright and the Leaf when researching Thomas Wedgewood’s early photograms, the precursors to what we know as photographs. Photographic historians tried to connect the Leaf to Wedgewood and to other male photographers such as William Henry Fox Talbot, and even Bright’s own scientifically minded brothers and father, before Professor Larry Schaaf stumbled upon her by comparing the initials on the back of the Leaf to those on her watercolours.
Since her discovery, Bright has received little fanfare outside of academia and photography circles. I wrote the poem to give the acknowledgment due to her, but to also represent all those women in art, music, science and other fields whose identities and work have been side-lined by virtue of them being women – the so-called muses, handmaidens and helpmates, when they were actually creators, geniuses, the sparks who saw no recognition. For every Quillan Leaf discovered, there are dozens of women’s accomplishments tucked away, forgotten or credited to a man. I hope they continue to surface in my lifetime.
About Gerry Stewart
Gerry Stewart is a poet, creative writing tutor and editor based in Finland. Her poetry collection Post-Holiday Blues was published by Flambard Press, UK. In 2019 she won the ‘Selected or Neglected Collection Competition’ with Hedgehog Poetry Press for her collection Totems. Her writing blog can be found at http://thistlewren.blogspot.fi/ and @grimalkingerry on Twitter.
Feature image by Luka Tsikolia.