Mark Fiennes

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Mark Fiennes (November 11, 1933 – December 30, 2004) was an English photographer and illustrator.

Fiennes was born at Dalton, Northumberland, England, the eldest of five children of the industrialist Maurice Fiennes, who was later knighted by Harold Wilson for his services to the export of British heavy engineering products, and of his wife Sylvia. Although Mark's cousin, the celebrated Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes kept the original family names, Maurice's branch of the family did not, and his children and grandchildren are known simply by the surname Fiennes (as per [1]).

He attended Eton for several years before he fell ill with glomerulonephritis. In hope of improving his health his parents sent him to Australia, New Zealand and the United States where Fiennes studied agriculture. With his health restored, he returned to England and became a farming tenant on the estate of the Earl of Stradbroke near Blythburgh in Suffolk. There, Fiennes met and married the novelist Jennifer Lash in 1962. Her passion for art served as an impetus for Fiennes, who took up photography at the age of 40.

Fiennes excelled in the medium of visual arts. His work featured some of the world's most renowned museums as well as Britain's most celebrated estates. In 1985 he received a commission from the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. to produce images for their exhibit Tresure Houses of Britain. After this, Fiennes' photography recorded the restoration of Windsor Castle for the Royal Collections.

Mark Fiennes was also commissioned to illustrate books for a number of British and American publishers such as HarperCollins, Random House, Thames & Hudson, Hamish Hamilton, W. W. Norton (NY) Publishers, Pitkin Guides, Michael Joseph and Yale University Press. Between 1983 and 1995, he regularly contributed to Country Life magazine.

Fiennes and his late wife, Jennifer Lash, were the parents of actors Ralph Fiennes and Joseph Fiennes, film-makers Martha Fiennes and Sophie Fiennes, composer Magnus Fiennes and Jacob ("Jake") Fiennes, gamekeeper of Raveningham Hall (Sir Nicholas Bacon's estate). he also had a foster son, Michael Emery, an archaeologist. Jennifer Lash died of breast cancer in 1993, aged 55.

In 1996 Fiennes married Caroline Evans and lived with her in Clare, Suffolk, until his death from undisclosed causes, although given that he had been diagnosed as a young man with glomerulonephritis, a potentially fatal kidney disease, and was given only a few years to live, it is possible that he had a kidney disease of some sort.

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