Rejlander in Wolverhampton: His sponsorship by William Parke

Abstract

Abstract The study of Rejlander's life and career by Edgar Yoxall Jones1 contains a chapter on the time he spent in Wolverhampton. Jones was particularly interested in Rejlander's studio there, and managed to have the house at 42 Darlington Street, which he correctly thought had been the studio, photographed (figure 1) just before it was demolished in 1966 to make way for the town's ringroad. Indeed, little remains of the town in which the artist Rejlander worked after learning the skills of photography in an afternoon spent at Nicholaas Henneman's studio in Regent Street, London in 1853.2 Today the office of a computer firm stands on the site of the studio at a roundabout on the ringroad (figure 2). Jones states that ‘culturally, Wolverhampton was a backwater. What culture there was was centred around the bookshop of William Parke, who was also part-owner of the Wolverhampton Chronicle.’3