John Penrice

Who was John Penrice?

Major John Penrice was a British soldier, photographer, and the author of an English glossary of the Quran based on the edition of Gustav Leberecht Flügel.

His father John Penrice Sr. was a captain in the King's 15th Hussars. He had young brothers and sisters including, Thomas Penrice of Kilvrough, Captain Herbert Newton Penrice of the Royal Engineers whose tunnelling machine was used during the Crimean War. and Rev. Charles Berners Penrice.

A captain, then major in the Norfolk Artillery, Penrice exhibited calotypes and waxed-paper architectural and landscape views in the 1854 and 1855 Photographic Society exhibitions in London and in the 1855 London Photographic Institution exhibition. His work after that was in collodion. It is said, he had "a complex character, Penrice eventually became a justice of the peace in Norfolk. In 1844, on the death of his father, he sent twenty-five major paintings from Wilton House, the family home near Yarmouth in Norfolk, to Messrs Christie and Manson. Some of these are in the National Gallery, London, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.