Amelia Elizabeth Guppy
Early UK born photographer (1808–1888)
Amelia Elizabeth Guppy, née Parkinson (November 21, 1808 – 1886), was an early artist and photographer from the United Kingdom.
Life
Amelia Elizabeth Guppy was born at Bullingham Court in Hertfordshire on 21 November 1808, the eldest child of wealthy parents Richard Parkinson (abt 1782-1851) and Lucy (1788-1834), née Lechmere, daughter of Royal Navy officer William Lechmere, Vice-Admiral of the White living at Kinnersley Castle. She studied art under David Cox. She eloped to marry Robert Guppy, a member of the Bar of the Middle Temple, on 12 Nov 1834 at Bitterley Court, Shropshire, even though the marriage was approved by both families, perhaps to avoid a society marriage. They moved to Trinidad in 1837 and lived at La Falaise estate, Pointe-a-Pierre Road, Naparima Hill, San Fernando. Her husband, Robert, was assisting the Protheroe relatives of Amelia's brother-in-law, Samuel Guppy, Jr., with the legal issues around the emancipation of the slaves on the Protheroe plantations in the south of Trinidad. Robert later became Mayor of San Fernando for many years.
Amelia was a painter and photographer, and spent much time in Trinidad painting the local scenery and plants, particularly the orchids. She loved orchids, collected, them, painted, named and classified them, and even planted them in trees around her house. She spent time sketching travelling around the island on a white mule, sometimes for days at a time, with a young man, Thorpe, whom she trained to be her assistant.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q39533047. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1808, 1886, 1782 and 1851.
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This entry incorporates text from “Amelia Elizabeth Guppy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.