Chiswick Auctions is to offer a group of 29 lots from the estate of Cherry Kearton (1871-1940). Kearton was one half of the Kearton brothers who are widely acknowledged as the pioneers of natural history photography and cinematography made in the field and underpinned by fieldcraft and scientific rigour. Both were Fellows of the Royal Photographic Society. Richard (1862-1928) and Cherry Kearton published their natural history photography widely in book form, through articles and lantern shows, and their films were widely exhibited. One lot is from British ornithologist C.H. Bentham, Richard Kearton's son-in-law and his co-author on Pocket Book of Birds (1925).
The Cherry Kearton material includes Kearton's prototype rifle camera from c.1919, a tropical hand camera and his 3a Autographic Kodak Special model B camera, a selection of photographs (including correspondence and photographs with Theodore Roosevelt from 1909), press cuttings, documents relating to Kearton's publications, books, camera patents and manuscript material. One lot includes a selection 35mm nitrate ciné film.
Michael Pritchard writes...Of the two Kearton brothers Cherry was widely acknowledged to be the more significant and 'demonstrated the outstanding value of the camera in the study of wild life', although the collaboration was a significant one until Richard's early death. As the photographic press noted the Kearton's books 'marked an entuirely new approach to the study of animal and bird life'. Although birds were the Kearton's initial subject, they expanded their work to include wider fauna and flora.
Summing up their contribution in 1940 the British Journal of Photography noted 'more than any other naturalists they developed photography and the photograph as the mode and the end of personal observation...and laid the foundation for a technique entirely different from any that had gone before'.
Cherry Kearton's work started in his native Yorkshire and spread more widely across Britain and then into Africa. Photography in daylight was supplemented by flashlight, and cinematography was added to still photography. Their work studying nature 'largely put an end to the wholesale slaughter of birds and beasts in the so-called interests of science' and their approach was followed by many other photographers.
Auction: The Art of Nature
Chiswick Auctions
10 February 2026 at 1100
Lots 66-94
See lot details here
Images: (top): a selection from 80 held in Kearton's library, including signed books (est. £600-800); (top, right): Prototype rifle camera c.1919 (est £2000-3000); (centre): flashlight photograph of a maneless African Lion and Cherry Kearton holding a lion cub c1909 (est £100-150); (lower): Kearton's personal press cutting's archive (est 200-300). All courtesy Chiswick Auctions.
BPH reported on a new book by John Bevis The Keartons: Inventing Nature Photography in 2016 and the acquisition of a Kearton cinematographic camera by the then National Media Musuem in 2013. A second camera reputed to be owned by the Keartons was shown on the Antiques Roadshow in 2016.
