Robert Welch

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, lived for a time in Enniskillen. He was the son of an accomplished Scottish amateur photographer. 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. 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 is considered to have an excellent sense of composition often got local people or landowners to stand in his photographs as models. Welch was hired by the shipyard Harland and Wolff to take photographs of the constructions of and . The series of photographs that Welch took of life in the West and Northwest of Ireland for the Congested Districts Board in the late 1880s, led to his being bestowed upon a royal warrant by Queen Victoria upon her visit to Ireland in 1900. This was one of four royal warrants granted to Irish photographers during her reign, making Welch one of only ten photographers outside the British Isles to receive a royal warrant. In 1923 Welch was awarded an honorary Masters of Science degree by Queen's University Belfast.

Welch's life was marked by his contributions to photography, ecology, geology, archaeology, anthropology and the environment. He served as a member and for a time, as president of both the Belfast Naturalist Field Club and the Conchological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. By the time of his death, Welch had taken thousands of photographs. A collection of roughly 5,000 of his glass plate negatives, lantern slides, prints, diaries, field notes and annotated maps were acquired by friends and family after his death and presented to the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery, now the Ulster Museum.

Gallery

Portrayals Frank Grimes (2005) - Titanic: Birth of a Legend; TV Documentary