Richard Kearton

Richard Kearton FZS, FRPS (2 January 1862 – 8 February 1928) and Cherry Kearton (8 July 1871 – 27 September 1940), brothers, were a pair of British naturalists and some of the world's earliest wildlife photographers. They developed innovative methods to photograph animals in the wild and, in 1895, published the first natural history book to be entirely illustrated by wild photographs. Richard was made a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London and Royal Photographic Society. Cherry later became a wildlife and news filmmaker, and friend to Theodore Roosevelt. The Royal Geographical Society created the Cherry Kearton Medal and Award in his honour. David Attenborough credits Kearton's films for inspiring him as a child to "dream of travelling to far-off places to film wild animals."

Biographies

Richard and Cherry were born in the village of Thwaite, North Riding of Yorkshire, England, the second and fourth sons of parents Mary and John Kearton. Their father was a yeoman farmer. The brothers were educated in Muker and Richard was a farmer in Swaledale, Yorkshire, until 1882, then manager of a publicity department at the publishing house Cassell & Co. until 1898. He married Ellen Rose Cowdrey in 1889 and had three sons and two daughters.

Cherry married Mary Burwood Coates in 1900, with whom he had a son, named Edward Cherry, and a daughter, Mary Nina, known as Nina. They divorced in 1920, and he married Ada Forrest, a South African soprano, in 1923. He died in 1940. The Royal Geographical Society's Cherry Kearton Medal and Award was created in his honour.