Jan.1942: Q Class destroyer HMS QUEENBOROUGH [HMAS later] on the Tyne, and the story of the photographer - James Henry Cleet FRPS [1876-1959].
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Description
4408. We would like to share here a moment of a late discovery on our part, something we had long been idly curious about and finally happened across - the name of the photographer who produced this ipoarticular mage and a whole catalogue of dramatically sharp warship portraits for the British Ministry of Defence in northern England around the 1940s. The man we are speaking about was James Henry Cleet [1876-1959], a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society [and not to be confused with his father, a well known artist of the same name working in the Tyneside area]. The photoshere of HMS QUEENBOROUGH and HMS QUALITY [preceding entry] we stress are NOT particularly good examples of what we are speaking about in that they are scans of copies - not taken from the original plate glass negatives: but we think many warship history followers will instantly recognize the body of work we are speaking about from the composition and style. Most of Mr Cleet's images are held in the Imperial War Museum, where these is some scant attribution - none that we could find on copies held in the Australian War Museum, where a name search does not turn him up either. These are the few facts that we have thus far gleaned about this great ships photographer : 'Jimmy' Cleet was born at 24 Bath Street Westoe in 1876, as we've mentioned the son of James Henry Cleet [1840-1913] a one-time shipwright and water-colour artist. He had an older sister Elizabeth Constance. On December 6 1908 Cleet married Eva Aspery. With some of his images, he is listed [anonymously] as an Official Royal Navy Photographer, but we don't have the details of how that came about, or when he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. Being the son of an artist, he apparently also painted watercolours. We find some of his father's 19th Century watercolours of their home area here: http://www.imagine.org.uk/details/index.php?id=TWCMS:G4522&querystr=&parent=random" >www.imagine.org.uk/details/index.php?id=TWCMS:G4522&qmp;q... There's another of Jimmy Cleet's 'Q' Class destroyer images at pic NO. 3348, HMAS QUICKMATCH, here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/5225777183/?reuploaded=1">www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/5225777183/?reuploaded=1 And that's it for the moment. We'd be glad to hear more. These few details have been gleaned from the Imperial War Museum website, and the South Shields Sanddancers Forum website, a local Intrernet discussion group - who seem to have a lot of fun. Kooka's not sure if these are people called 'Geordies.' Hmmmm. Just checked, and we guess so. They sound great. Photo; James Henry Cleet, FRPS [1876-1959], it is held in the Imperial War Museum, and the RAN Heritage Collection, image ID NO. 04432. A two-part COMPENDIUM of the Photostream's 60+ images of HMAS QUEENBOROUGH begins at Entry NO. 5435, here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/6684005275/in/photostream">www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/6684005275/in/photostream -
Owner
Kookaburra2011 -
Source
Flickr (Flickr) -
License
What does this mean? Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
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Further information
Link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/5659870573/
Resource type: Image
Added by: Simon Cotterill
Last modified: 7 years, 11 months ago
Viewed: 1132 times
Picture Taken: Unknown -
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