Henry William Taunt (1842-1922) photographer

Prints, postcards, a calendar for the academic year september 2016-August 2017 and a book to accompany the exhibition ‘Glass to Digital’ are all on sale to support Winston’s Wish.  Order forms are available here: ‘Glass to Digital’ – order forms for book and calendar

Henry Taunt. Radley Hall c 1890	Henry Taunt. Markets, c 1890
Henry Taunt. Dining Hall, c1890	Henry Taunt. Covered Passage, before 1892

Radley College bought the freehold of the estate at Radley Hall in 1889. Although the school had been in residence here since 1847, most buildings were temporary structures. Immediately in 1889 the school embarked on a major building programme, starting with the Rackets Court and continuing in each decade until the present day.Henry W Taunt of Oxford was used intermittently by Radley College from at least the 1880s to create a permanent record of the growing school. A trawl through Taunt’s surviving day books shows that he took over 60 different photographs of the College over a number of years; though Radley has a few extras for which there is no entry.

 

Henry Taunt. Radley College c1890	Henry Taunt. ‘School’ exterior, c1890
Henry Taunt. Radley College c1890	Henry Taunt. ‘The Slums’, now Paton’s Quad, c1890

Radley’s collection comprises a large number of individual prints kept in one of Henry taunt’s characteristic canvas presentation wrappers, and a number of other shots pasted into private albums, often labelled and arranged overlapping each other.

 

Henry Taunt. Clock Tower c1890, with the ceiling of School from the overlapping photo in the album	Henry Taunt. Dormitory, North End, c 1890
Henry Taunt. Octagon, c1890	Henry Taunt. College Oak and College Pond, c1890

Taunt was born in Oxford in 1842 to ‘poor but respectable’ parents. Aged 14 he joined the staff of Edward Bracher, a pioneer photographer with a shop on the High Street, and soon found himself entrusted with the outdoor (as opposed to studio) work. He was retained as photographic manager when Wheeler & Day bought out the business in 1863. This cutting edge technology – photography was barely two decades old – clearly suited his temperament.Every inch the Victorian self-made man and entrepreneur, Taunt established his own business in 1868. Despite (or perhaps because of) financial difficulties, he continued to work until his death in 1922. In addition to the usual studio portraits, commissioned photography, local views and postcards, he published over fifty books and tourist guides, and a daily leaflet summarising the results of the Bumps. Perhaps his best known book was A New Map of the Thames (first published 1872), on the strength of which he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He invented a mobile darkroom mounted on a punt so he could develop glass plates in the field. His firm even branched out into general printing, window glass (a natural development from picture framing) and bicycle repairs (presumably inspired by the tourists who bought his guidebooks), while as a children’s entertainer he was in demand for lantern slide shows.

 

Henry Taunt. Radley’s first boathouse on the River Thames, c1890	Henry Taunt. Radley boys at the river, c1890
Henry Taunt. Sandford Brewery, c1890	Henry Taunt. The River Thames near Radley, c1890