Graystone Bird

Who is Graystone Bird?

Owen Graystone Bird was a British professional photographer, active during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some sources give his first name as William instead of Owen, however no available sources unambiguously list both Owen and William among his given names, and all sources agree on the prominent use of Graystone. The cause of confusion about the correct form of Bird's full name is unclear, but it does not seem to be a case of multiple photographers using the names "Graystone" and "Bird" in combination, contemporaneously.

He was a member of the 2nd-generation of a prominent family of pioneering photographers from the town of Bath, in the United Kingdom. His father, Frederic Charles Bird, a photographer and portrait painter active from the middle to late nineteenth century, had received a Royal Warrant of Appointment from the contemporary Prince of Wales, the future king Edward VII. The younger Bird would also receive this honour, although the limited records available are unclear about whether his patron, as Prince of Wales, was Edward VII or George V, or both.

Bird was a skilled and respected artist, the winner of numerous photography prizes, whose talent was internationally recognized during his professional lifetime. Posthumously however, he slipped into relative obscurity, when compared to other notable photographers of the period.