Robert Welch (photographer)

Robert John Welch (22 July 1859 – 28 September 1936) was an Irish photographer interested in natural history, particularly mollusca. Welch, born in Strabane, County Tyrone, and lived for a time in Enniskillen. He was the son of an accomplished Scottish amateur photographer.[1] After the death of his father Welch established his own business in 1883 in Lonsdale Street in Belfast. Much of his time was spent taking pictures that reflected the life of the people and the contemporary landscape.[2]

Newgrange by Robert Welch, probably about 1890.

Welch specialised in outdoors photography and took thousands of photographs of the towns and scenery of Ireland. He was a skilled craftsman and his studies of Ireland and Irish life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are today justly famous.[2] Welch also took many important photographs of national monuments, megaliths and dolmens, particularly of sites such as Carrowmore, Loughcrew, the Hill of Tara and Newgrange. Welch had an excellent sense of composition often got local people or landowners to stand in his photographs as models.[3]

The Titanic sails through Belfast Lough by Robert Welch.

The National Museum of Northern Ireland has a collection of over 4,000 photographs by Welch covering a fifty year span, in addition to his diaries and maps.[3] A permanent exhibition at the Ulster Museum features twenty enlarged photographs of his works on the subject of travel and transport.

Welch was a member of the Royal Irish Academy as well as serving as president of both the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club and the Conchological Society of Great Britain & Ireland. In 1923 to recognise his work Queen's University Belfast awarded him an honorary Master of Science degree. He was hired by the shipyard Harland and Wolff to take photographs of the constructions of RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic.[1]

William Alfred Green, another noted Belfast photographer was an apprentice of Welch, and photographed many of the same subjects and sites as his mentor.[2]

References
  1. Welch, Robert John. "Robert John Welch (1859 - 1936): Photographer". The Dictionary of Ulster Biography. Retrieved 13 October 2020.
  2. Welch, Robert. "RJ Welch". The Belfast Archive Project. Retrieved 13 October 2020.
  3. Welch, Robert John. "Welch Collection". National Museum of Northern Ireland. Retrieved 13 October 2020.


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