The Sutcliffe Gallery has evolved over the years in direct line of business descent from Sutcliffe's own photographic career.

Frank Sutcliffe, born at Headingley, Leeds in 1853, set up his own professional photographic studio in a dis-used jet workshop in Waterloo Yard, Whitby in 1875. He remained in Whitby up until his death at the age of 88 in 1941.

Sutcliffe developed a great affection for the busy little fishing port on the rugged North Yorkshire coast where he produced magnificent studies of the characterful fisherfolk working around the harbourside with its picturesque square-rigged ships.

These, together with his superbly composed landscapes and the farming community going about its daily tasks in the neighbouring moorland villages and valleys, eventually earned him over sixty gold, silver and bronze medals at exhibitions throughout the world between the late 1870s and the end of the 19th century.

The vast majority of his negatives were on whole plate glass, the earliest being on wet collodion requiring the glass to be coated with the sensitive emulsion immediately prior to exposure of the plate.

These negatives and the business were acquired by the Shaw family in 1959 after having been passed along through two other owners subsequent to Frank Sutcliffe. In 1965 Sutcliffe's plates were donated by The Sutcliffe Gallery to Whitby Literary & Philosophical Society, owners of Whitby Museum.

Since that time a gradual process has taken place of transferring the images from the original plate, in the early days onto 8"x10" sheet film, to create high quality duplicate negatives but now, with the means available to make high resolution scans, each subject is being digitally recorded on to two CDs, one for the Gallery archives and one for Whitby Literary & Philosophical Society. The main reason for doing all of this is the ethical one of obviating any further handling of the original negative.

In 2002 a further book 'Every Now and Then' by Michael Shaw was published. This illustrates a comparison between Frank Sutcliffe's monochrome photography, originated in the 19th century on whole plate glass negatives with Michael's 21st century high resolution digital colour photography.

A video film is available which explores the life and work of Frank Sutcliffe. This is introduced by Colin Ford, CBE, who, at the time of the film being published, was Head of the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, Bradford.

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